DUST ‘EM OFF (PUT 'EM BACK UP ON THE SHELF)

6TH PERIGEE OF THE 760TH SWEEP
ICONIC CONETL: 10 SWEEPS / 21 YEARS OLD

six months prior to the detonation of the pidgin parlor
(14,181 words)

When you flee, there’s only one place that nobody would ever expect you to go.

You’ve rarely spent a lot of time in your hivestem, the past few sweeps. Why bother, when Raphae’s is so undeniably better? Your matesprit has got drones to clean it, heat running through the floors, and the sort of kitchen that’s large enough to keep three half-grown psionics fed through all of your molts. He’s got an entire floor to himself, with ceilings high enough that you can light into the air without even scraping your horns. The doorways are all large enough to fit your lusus through them, and there’s a private lift, straight from the lobby. It’s better, in every way, and after nearly four sweeps living there, it’s more your hive than his.

It’s your cozies strewn across the sofas. Your plushies are the ones nestled onto the beds, your porcelain kittens are on the coffee table, and it’s your ashtrays that cover every available surface. It’s your auspistice who sleeps in the spare room, and your moirail that sleeps in the enclade suite. Oh, Raphae has the master bedroom, but aside from his makeup cabinet and his gun cabinet, what in there’s actually his? It’s your colour that stains the walls, yellow so pale that it’s courting white. The signs of Raphae’s touch rest like stains in the room: the drape of the black-out curtains over the windows, the purple hemming the bottom of each wall, and the faint smell of cat, clinging to every surface.

Everything always smells like cat, for a fellow who liked to keep his lusus outdoors.

Oh, Sipara lives there. So does Iphige, when she bothers to be around! But she’s hanging off of Shepherd’s arm more often than not, and Sipara knows who’s hive it is. Everyone does, by this point, and they keep their things to the backstage accordingly.

Except it’s not yours. And everything there is red.

This hivestem - nestled four blocks from the gate of the Kinnor campus, thin-walled and packed with enough lowbloods you can hear your neighbours breathing one block over - this is your hive, and it’s strange to walk back in, and realise exactly how much you’ve forgotten.

Raphae’s penthive looks like your home. This hivestem block looks like the memory of a home, maybe, at the very best! It looks like a snapshot of you back at seven sweeps, back when you’d thought painting the walls chalkboard black was the most brilliant idea you’d ever come across. You’d spent an night, and most of the day, painting all the walls. And then you’d spent what felt like half your stipend to decorate it in neon swirls and decorations.

There’s lists up on the walls, from the last day you’d been there. There’s ballet slippers on the counter - old, tattered, with yellow still dried on the tips. There’s a mug with the rim still entombed in sugar, and a dinosaur on the front, and a half-smoked pack of cigarettes next to it. Everything’s left just like you’d abandoned it, even down to the hoodie you’d tossed onto the floor.

You’d meant to wash it later! But you never quite got around to it. You’d never managed to sweep up the feathers on the floor, either, or fix the dent your lusus had left on the counter, or come back for your charger. The entire room, when you turn, feels like a list of things you’d left undone, that last night - but that was you, at age seven. Everything’d always felt a little undone.

You’d liked it that way, mostly.

When you breathe in, the air smells like dust, and birds, and there’s no traces of cats at all. The only colours here are your own pale yellow, and the sort of white on the stonework that comes from decades of sun exposure. It might be old, but it’s yours, from tip to bottom.

Almost. There is a glass on the counter. It’s shaped like a bear, round earred and soft-eyed, with the streaky yellow colour that comes from hand-painting. When you pick it up, the message’s still right there, just like you remember, back when you’d barely known your moirail’s kismesis as more than a name on a website:

ʕ(づ- ᴥ -)ʔづ
beary nice to meet you!

And he’d scribbled his name, raphae irrigo, in a wriggler’s heartfelt cursive across the bottom.

You bounce the mug in your hand, thoughtful, testing the weight of it, and then you hurl it hard against the wall.

A moment later, someone knocks on the door, crisp and loud as a gunshot in the freshly broken silence.

( Read more... )

ICONIC CONETL | 11 SWEEPS / 23 YEARS OLD

derevnya | 1,171 words

You’re starting to think that Vadaya’s infected you with a fucking virus, because Alexar’s built like a brick shithouse, and you’re not entirely sure you mind. He’s been kneading bread for the past five minutes. There’s not supposed to be anything attractive about that.

You’re not some sort of bread-enthralled deviant! It’s not like that. It’s just - it’s more than a little impossible to deny there isn’t something attractive about the level of attention he’s showing to it. And the tight shirt isn’t hurting things, either. You’re supposed to be cutting things, but instead you’ve been lounging in the air, watching the smooth pull of his shoulders rolling as he works.

Inviting him to a cooking class had been a lark! Bakers like cooking. It only made sense. You hadn’t expected him to offer to drop by your hive, instead, but of course you’d taken him up on it. Vadaya’s ruined your tastes, evidently, because there’s nothing about how solidly square that Alexar is that should appeal to you. The man’s a fucking triangle, all hard muscles and soft planes in turn, with downhooked horns, and hair that brushes his shoulders, and nothing, nothing at all that so much as reminds you of Steamy, or Gelato, or even fucking Dysseu: nobody that your gaze’s ever lingered on, even in passing, except Vadaya.

And now, apparently, fucking Alexar.

It’s a tragedy! If he was a little curvier, you could sling an arm around his waist and draw him in close. If he was a little more slender, then you could work with that. This is the first time that you’ve ever had a fellow follow up your date with the announcement he’s gotten back with his matesprit, but you’ve dealt with dozens of trolls a great more committed than Alexar fucking Spigot.

Unfortunately, none of them have been twice your size, and over six inches taller. As far as your usual strategies go, you’re having to improvise.

Though, if you’re being fair, it’s not like you’re having to do anything. Alexar’s not exactly a prize in himself. He’s fun, and he’s sweet, but you didn’t have an eye on keeping him around at first. Why would you? He’s not your type. He’s so very aggressively not your type - he’s not even highblooded, poor thing, and he’s a flatscan to boot.

You’ve never had much interest in that sort of person. They’re like cullbait: defenseless and soft and sad, in all the wrong kind of ways.

But if this is a competition, now, between you and some fellow you’ve never met.. well, the fact Alexar’s not a prize in himself doesn’t mean much.

All that matters is that you’ve never met a prize you haven’t taken.

“Are y’ even watchin’?” Alexar accuses you. He looks up from the bread, finally, lips curling into a smile. As far as these things go, it’s a nice mouth! Full lips. Nice shape. It looks better when they’re curled up in that lopsided smirk, dimpling his cheeks and pushing the bottoms of his eyes up. “Or,” he says, stretching out the word, “did y’ go ‘n fall asleep on me? World t’ ID. Bread’s almos’ done, sleepin’ beauty -”

He’s not a prize! But when you curl your lip at him and huff, rolling over mid-air, he laughs. It’s loud, and it’s brash, and it’s just as drawling as his speech, and it shouldn’t be charming. It is, though. He laughs, the sound echoing, those fucking dimples in his cheeks, and..

Oh, you hate the way you brighten.

(He’s not your type, either, but that hasn’t stopped you from taking him back home, has it?)

“I didn’t fall asleep, prettypear! I was just thinking, that’s all. You’re making an awful mess, you know that?” You grin back at him, and for the first time, you almost wish you had ears mobile enough to pin back. You don’t know how to look charming, rather than just intimidating. It’s not something you’d ever thought twice about; you’d slunk back hive dressed in blood and bruises, and all Steamy had ever done was get upset on your behalf. You could’ve culled someone in front of any of your paramours, and they wouldn’t have blinked an eye.

But she and Raphae had been indigo.

Alexar’s a jadeblood, and he’s a flatscan to boot. You could cull him in a thousand different ways! You’d taken him out to a culling fest, for heaven’s sake, just to show it off, before you’d given any thought on ever seeing him again. And he hadn’t flinched, but you don’t want him cowering like Dysseu or Lu. There’s no gratification in that.

But maybe you don’t need ears to set him at ease, because he doesn’t seem intimidated by you, for all that he should be. He just snorts, amused, as he looks himself up and down. “Am I?” he says, all guileless doubt, and for all that you should be irritated, all you do is click your tongue, straightening up from your roll as you set your feet neatly on the ground.

“You’re covered in flour! It’s a mess.”

“Really? Hh. Y'know, ’s what th’ apron’s for?”

“You’ve got it all over you,” you complain. “It’s a mess, darling. Here -”

His t-shirt is awfully tight. And it dips just dreadfully low, collarbone clear and exposed, the top of his chest highlighted - but you’re carefully not paying attention to that. No, he has a matesprit, and being obvious isn’t how you’ve ever won anything.

You have to be subtle.

And that’s why you make a show of sighing, like this is all some great burden, before you carefully, meticulously wet your lips. Alexar’s watching you as your tongue slides across them, slow and pointed. Of course he’s watching you, but it’s easy enough to pretend you’re not watching him through your lashes as you take a second pass.

Or as you slide your thumb across your bottom lip, forefinger positioned to brace it and draw emphasis to them, just in case he’s blind. Then you step in, balancing one hand against his shoulder as you lean forward and drag your thumb across his collar. The flour smudge comes off, just like that. Of course it does. It was barely there in the first place! And his skin’s so /cold/ under your hands, icy enough that it reminds you almost of Vadaya’s.

“I don’t know if you’re making bread, or dusting my kitchen,” you sniff. “But there! One spot off.” He opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, and you tsk, tilting your head up to look at him. Your hand’s still on his shoulder, a single finger braced on the bare expanse of his neck.

When you curl your lip, you feel his pulse jump. “But,” you say, bright, stepping back, pressing your hand against your chest, “I guess it’ll just have to do. Try to be more careful, dearheart! And, now - what were you saying about the bread?”

THERE WASN’T ANY WATER IN THE WISHING WELL

ICONIC CONETL

10.5 sweeps / 24 years old | somewhere in the continental core
^{2191 words}

“Sweetling,” you say, “d’you figure I’m just bad at this?”

The bathroom smells like bleach and copper, sharp enough that it makes you want to gag. The cool of the tile against your forehead’s some help! It’s a distraction, at least, for a few moments at a time. And then you hear the scrape of metal on metal, and your gorge is back up, heavy as a softball in the back of your throat.

You’d known what you were getting into! But, oh, knowing your intolerances didn’t mean you’d realised it’d be quite this bad. If anyone’s going to be pawing at your ports, though, it might as well be Sipara.

She was the first to see them after they were installed. Why shouldn’t she be the first to see them now that they’re broken?

“Bad at what?” she says idly. When you glance back at her, she’s still digging through her toolkit, pulling things to the side and setting them on the sink. Her little sterilisation box is behind them, its mouth half-open and waiting with a patience that nearly feels palpable.

When you look at it, it winks at you.

“Don’t ask me. Oh, everything? Bonnie’s off in space. Vadadear is -” You drag your tongue across your lips. “- a bad idea,” you decide, slowly. “A terrible idea. Steamy’s - well, Bonnie’s off in space. D’you think she would be, if I were, y’know - better at this?”

“I think,” she drawls, “your face’s going white, nerd, so, like, stop watchin’ me set up?”

You turn back to the tile, closing your eyes as you rest your head against it. This isn’t Sipara or Hadean’s apartment, you don’t think. Maybe the little brownblood dawdling in the living rooms? The walls are all green and white, painted up in something that edges uncannily close to jade, and if you stare long enough, you think you could dig up the hex code. “So bossy, sweetling.”

“But fine! I’m looking away.”

“Good.” All you have to listen to is the clink of metal as she moves. A message from Cramel pops up in the corner of your vision, but it’s as scrambled as everything coming in from your wetware’s been, lately, so you blink the notification off. Oh, if it’s important, she’ll call. “And, umm - Bonnie’s your rail, yeah?”

“Mm~!” If you just focus on the conversation, this is all nearly tolerable. There’s something nostalgic about this, for all that you’d never let Sipara work on you back when you were still quadrants. Shepherd would’ve skinned the both of you if she’d so much as nicked any of her hardware, and the scars had still been fresh, back then.

No, it’s not the portwork that’s familiar. It’s just the feel of her, and the comfort of being near. Sipara’s practically a weight in any room she’s in, and it’s soothing enough to fall into her orbit. You’d mostly combed through her problems! She was a pupa. But that was a sweep ago, and she’d always wanted to try, at least, for yours. “Mm. She’s gone all the time. Policeradicator business, y’know,” you say, and you hear the twitch of her ear. “Which is fine, I’m not exactly a clingy sort of fellow, but - well - it’s just kind of wretched, isn’t it, when you don’t know when someone’ll be there, or when they’ll be gone?”

Your words are getting a little heavy. You roll your shoulders, letting your eyes drift up for all that no one can see it. “How did you manage with your dear fourprongs, sweetheart?”

She doesn’t reply. You give her twenty seconds, then thirty, but the silence is just dragging on, getting heavier with each passing moment, and then you give in. “Sipa?”

When you turn around to look at her, her shoulders are hunched in, and.. oh. She’s not looking at you. You step over, careful, and each step feels like weights are tied to your feet. (How do people ever manage without psionics?) “Sipa,” you croon, reaching out. Her hair’s covering her face, thick as a curtain. You have to tuck your hand under her face to tilt it up, one thumb on her chin, and -

- she’s crying, the sort of runny brown tears you haven’t seen since she was little. “Oh, no,” you say, alarmed. “Oh, no, sugarpop - Sipadear - what’re you doing?”

She snarls at you, baring every last one of those fangs, and just like that, you withdraw. There’s plenty of old scars on your wrists and arms from her snits as a pupa, rings of weals and chalk-white skin. You don’t need to add more. “Sipadear,” you scold, but that doesn’t bring down the threat display; she just whines instead like a broken car engine, with the sort of rasp that you don’t know where she got. “What’s wrong? C’mon, sweetling, you’ve got words. What’s the matter?”

She sniffs. You croon at her, voice pitched low and soft as a lusus. “Cinnamondumpling,” you half-sing, “c’mon, now, spit it out -”

She opens her mouth.

There’s a sharp knock at the door, loud as a gunshot, and just like that, Sipara wilts.

“Sips?” Hadean calls a moment later, and you’re going to strangle him. “You okay in there?”

“I -”

Oh, for fuck’s sake, she actually sobs, before she clamps both hands over her mouth.

It’s a little too late. If it was anyone else, you’d be impressed by how quickly the door snatches open! Hadean’s certainly got a mind for dramatics; if he wasn’t as ruint as the rest of you, blood-dark shadows marring his skin and hollows in his cheeks, it’d be almost striking. His horns are up, his lip is curled. He looks like a hound stepping in front of his herd, after it went and got hit by a car.

It’s pathetic.

“We’re fine,” you drawl, stepping forward. There’s blood streaking down his face again, a sticky cherry river creeping down those cheekbones, and if Sipara wasn’t here, you’d lick your thumb and wipe it right off.

But she’s right here. It’s a shame, really! If she wasn’t, you can’t help but reflcet, this would be a nice enough opportunity to get rid of your little clone, once and for all. (Even down to the initials - every time you’re over it, something reminds you of exactly how subpar her replacement for you was.) “We’re just talking, sweetheart. Y’might’ve heard of it~! It’s what folks do when they’re not cracking heads with strangers online, mm?”

“So don’t worry!” There’s the smaller brownblood peeking out from behind him, dull eyes wide as saucers in the dark. “You and your little sap-eyed potoobrain can just settle down.”

“We’re fine,” Sipara echoes behind you, scrubbing at her eyes with a palm. “I promiiise -”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure!”

He glances your way with a derisive flick of his eyes, and then he clicks his tongue, pulling the door shut.

You give it thirty seconds, then you tilt your head at her. “Sipara,” you coax, soft. “Sweetheart! What’s got you started, hmm?”

“.. Pheres’s dead.”

Oh.

You don’t think congratulations are what she’s after, exactly! Or, well, no. Of course it isn’t, for all that it’s warranted, and for all that he isn’t her quad any longer. But that’s alright. You can say something comforting, the sort of things she’s waiting to hear. You open up your mouth -

- and what comes out is a crackle of static instead, as the censoring device kicks in.

If you could, you’d scalp Raphae for this. But he’s over two hundred miles towards the sea, and you can’t focus on the swell of rage, not when Sipara’s right here. “Don’t cry over it,” you try instead, and this time, when you reach out, she doesn’t growl. Her hair’s wiry under your palm, the way it always was. Has been. And when’s the last time you had to comfort her when she cried? “C’mon, now, chin up, sweetling. What d’you think that’s gonna do?”

“It’s not fair.” She leans into your hand hard, eyes fluttering shut, and if her voice’s ragged, her expression’s just tight. “It’s not fair, Ico, it’s - he’s dead, and I couldn’t do anything - nobody even knew to do nothing - and - and Riccin’s hurt, and -”

“Everyone keeps leaving.” Her voice’s getting thick. Your throat’s tightening in response, a cold weight hanging in the back, somehow so different from the way you were gagging before. “Hads almost died, too, and - everyone keeps leaving, and so did you, and now you’re trying to pretend we’re normal.”

“I thought you were dead!”

You’d have preferred to stick with the gagging, you think.

Her eyes are shining red, now, that rheumy cusp-hue that you’ve never been sure what to think of. It’s trailing sticky tracks down her cheeks, for all of her swiping; there’s tears dripping off of her lashes and rolling down her nose, and it’s awful, because through it all, she’s watching you. And you don’t know what to do.

With Bonnie, you’d have papped her. Or shooshed her. A sweep ago, you might’ve done the same with Sipara, properity be damned! How many times is your fledging going to swing into the nest, singing her sad songs? These are the sort of things that her moirails should be dealing with, but..

Well. Sipara’s always had wretched taste in that sort of thing, hasn’t she?

So you ruffle her hair, running your fingers through the ironed-flat strands, letting your nails scrape at her scalp in the way you know she appreciates. “Oh, my poor little hellion. D’you want an apology?” Her eyes are so red. “Because I’m sorry I left you,” you say, warm and soft and carefully, meticulously free of your usual contempt. Sipara’s all shining light and brittle edges, right now. The wrong word could shatter her like a pane, you think, without even trying.

So you keep it docile. “I would’ve brought you with me, if I’d thought about it - but, gosh, I didn’t, and that was downright cruel. But I’m here now. And I’m not going to leave again, how’s that?” You free your hand from her hair, give her ear a little tug that sets all of the rings to jangling. “It’ll be you and me, from now on,” you half-croon, lusus-soft, but she’s just.. staring at you.

The last time you’d had to comfort her like this, she’d been round-cheeked and moptopped, nearly a whole sweep younger. Her face’s got angles, now. She looks older, and the shade of her pupa-self rests in the twist of her mouth, the cant of her ears. It’s painfully familiar. It’s distressingly new, too, and like a routine set to new music, you’re not sure exactly where to set your feet.

“Sipa -” you prompt, and then she flings down her tools in a clatter of metal, and throws herself at you.

Her face fits neatly into your collarbone. She’s just small enough that her curls tickle at the bottom of your chin, and her hands, when she wraps them tight around your back, are entirely too warm. She’s too warm, really, to be touching you; you can feel the heat of her sinking through your skin and burning each of your scars, wedging its way in like brands on your husk. You’ve gone stiff as a rod, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

You hate folks touching you like this, but it’s Sipara. You pat her head, awkwardly, twice, and you give her a moment before you start gently prying her off. She goes, grudgingly, ears drooping so low that they’re brushing her shoulders. “Don’t strangle me,” you tease her, once she’s finally loose. She looks like a half-drowned rat, poor pupa, so you sling an arm around her shoulder, haul her in as close as you can tolerate.

“It’s understandable you’re upset, sugarhorns.” There’s a fine line to dance here, between true sympathies and false, but you can manage it. Haven’t you spent sweeps learning how? “And I’m sorry for your loss. For everyone’s. But you’ve still got your little red-mite out there, don’t you?” A beat. “And you’ve got me.” You give her shoulder a tug, then you let go. Her hair’s all a mess from your tousling! Fingers through it straightens it out neat enough, at least. “So don’t fret -”

She exhales, deflating under you, and then she pulls back. “I don’t believe you,” she says, quiet. “I dunno how I can.” She’s not looking you in the eyes as she turns away, shoulders down, her ears still drooping, and.. oh. Oh, damn it all. “Sipa,” you try, coaxing, “hey -”

“We got work to do, dude.” Her voice’s getting steadier, now that she’s not looking at you, and somehow that hurts. It used to be that you could comfort her out of whatever ruts she was in, as easy as soothing your lusus.

But you suppose a lot changes, in half a sweep. “Go ahead and take off your shirt, and we’ll get started.”

ICONIC CONETL | 8 SWEEPS / 17 YEARS OLD

RAPHAE IRRIGO | 7 SWEEPS / 16 YEARS OLD

temasek, hanhai region | 1,406 words

“What,” Raphae says, with great despair, “are you doing?”

You pause, one foot still on the tile. When you twist up your leg to check, the sole of your boot’s still scraped clean of mud and blood entirely. “I’m not going to track on the carpet, dear,” you protest, squinting in the light, “but - well - if you’d rather -”

When you yank on your psionics, you nearly double over.

There’s fire in your pan, coursing through your veins and scalding everything they pass by. Pain ripples through you, all the way from the top down: burning through your skin, seeping out in pulses from your horns. While there’s pink dancing in front of your eyes, when you blink, there’s yellow, too.

Hands clamp down on your shoulders. You’d bent a knee without thinking, horns ducked, but all you can manage is a thin rattle of protest as Raphae steers you over to the couch. “That was dumb. Sit down,” he says, and you could take it, if he was angry.

But he’s not. When you blink the iron out of your eyes, his brow is knit and his lips are thin, and he looks so dreadfully disappointed as he fetches the tea.

You’d hit him, if you could. You don’t want his help. You hadn’t asked for it, not once, not ever, and if you thought carving the words into his thick skull to make him believe that, then you would - but you can’t. Even the thought has your pan nanny weighing down on you, heavy as a fist, close enough to pain that it makes your eyes flutter closed, and no amount of ire’s worth that, not when so much as sparking already aches.

So you push the thought down, douse it to the bottom of your pan, until it’s nothing more than a bittersweet pang to deal with later.

Instead, you curl against the arm of the couch, ignoring the way you’re streaking green and yellow across the black. The cleaning droids will take care of it. They always do, and if they charge a little more, then he should’ve just let you go to bed. “It’s just a little burn-out.” Small-talk isn’t what you want, not when your mouth stings with unfamiliar iron, and everything aches. But Raphae’s rounding the corner from the kitchen nook - ha, nook - again, a glass of the iced brew in his hands, a rag on his wrist, and you can already tell he won’t let you sit in peace.

You’d slunk into the hive hours after your performance to try and avoid him. But of course he’d stayed up waiting for you. Why wouldn’t he?

He is your matesprit.

“Barely stage one,” you insist as he pushes the glass into your hands. All you want to do is curl up in your recuperacoon and sleep for the next three days, but it’s dawning on you that it’s not going to happen, not until you drink the tea. Perhaps you could stall! But what if he ordered you to drink it? So you take a sip instead, grimacing at the chemicals that lather your tongue. Rubbing it against the roof of your mouth, unfortunately, does onthing to dislodge them.

“Barely stage one is too close. That’s -” If Raphae ever got angry, this would be so much easier! That’d be an allowance. If he got angry, then maybe so could you, without your nanny pressing in like an anvil on a weight, but he just sighs instead, like you’re a pupa, like you’re Sipara caught in his room for the third time. “There’s only three stages.” If Raphae layered his patience on any thicker, you’d drown in it. You wish you could. “You shouldn’t have pushed that far at all.” His eyes soften. “You could’ve hurt yourself. You - god, ID, what were you thinking?”

His fingers brush your cheek, and bile rises in your throat. When you pull away, he exhales, shoulders slumping, but he doesn’t follow.

You take another sip of tea. You can’t get angry. You won’t get angry. And if your voice goes dry, that’s not the sort of thing that draws more then a buzz of discontent from your pan. They can make you mild! They can’t make you pleasant, no matter how much they try.

“I was thinking, darling, that it’d make a good show -”

“You tortured them,” Raphae says, flat, and his eyes aren’t nearly so soft, now.

Thank the gods. The way he’s looking at you is so much better than before. Anything’s better than that, so you smile at him, crooked and lazy, so he can see the green on your teeth. “But the crowd loved it, didn’t they?”

“You weren’t supposed to, Iconic.” He runs a hand through his hair, tangling his hair in the strands. And maybe you should be pleased, but it’s hard, when the next words he says are so stiff: “Shepherd’s furious. Wattan had a prestigious career ahead of them. And they were scheduled to start working under Neophyte Dimseede next perigee. You knew that.”

“Working under, hmm?” At his look, you laugh, curling your lip at him. “Don’t prosleytize me. I did them a favour, Raphae, and you know it. D'you think they wanted to be sent off to be someone’s personal assistant? No. They wanted to dance.”

“Same as the rest of us.” There’s drugs in the tea, meant to bring down your temperature, freeze all the straining in your blood vessels and slow the expansion until it’s no longer a danger. And although it’s unpleasant, you can feel it working. When you tug at your psi - gently, gently as you can manage, more of a tap than anything else - although there’s a ripple of protest down your spine, it’s nothing compared to earlier.

Not even stage one, then. You’ll be better in a night or two, and Raphae’ll have no reason to stay hovering. Maybe you’ll suggest the troupe does a tour outside of Temasek, too, in the next week or so. Shepherd does hate for him to leave the city.

“No one can dance forever. Psionics don’t save your knees. And - this is a stupid debate,” he finally huffs, hand still in his hair. “And you’re not taking it seriously. Don’t pretend you did anyone a favour, and certainly not Wattan. Shepherd is furious, Iconic.”

“I’m supposed to entertain, sweetheart. The crowd thought I was amazing.”

“You flayed a troll alive!” he snaps. “You tortured them, like some sort of a fucking clown. The crowd thinks you’re a feral.”

“If a little violence bothers you that much,” you say, conversational, “why, I bet you could just add that protocol to my head, too.”

He takes a breath, dragging his hands down his face. You like him better when he’s angry, over when he’s trying to simper at you. “That’s unfair.” Raphae frowns at you, but only for a moment: then he just looks sad, tired, and you’re all the way back to disappointment. “You know I wouldn’t do that, Ico.”

You swallow the last dredges of your tea. The bottom is chalky, as always, but your head’s feeling better - you’ll give him that. And when you swing your legs over the edge of the couch, your pan has cooled just enough that you can take some of the weight off your feet. You hate walking without psionics. It makes you feel drunk.

“I’m going to bed,” you tell him, brisk. “If Shepherd’s so gosh darn mad, I suggest you - oh, I don’t know - pap her, and tell her that ticket sales ought to be out the roof for the rest of the season. What’s that, compared to one little green? Why, I bet she’ll be able to make dozens just like them.”

“Really? You liked Wattan.” As much as you like anyone, he starts to say, lips forming the words, but for once, he thinks better of it. Perhaps the protocol slap had stung more than you’d expected! Because instead, he just sighs - and isn’t he ever tired of sighing?

“And I did her a favour.” Your psionics aren’t solid enough for you to really walkproperly: there’s too much weight on your feet, too much pressure gluing you to the ground, but there’s scarcely a sway as you step around the couch.

Your room’s the closest to the door for precisely this kind of reason. You’ll do just fine.

“She always promised she’d do the same for me,” you add, jauntily, and you don’t stay to see his expression. He knows you can’t lie. He made sure of that. “Light, Raphae. Thanks for the tea.”

ICONIC CONETL | 10 SWEEPS / 23 YEARS OLD
nott terminal, near-alternian space
g. a fistfight.

He falls like a tree, and behind you, Ullane boos.

“Went too quick,” she says, peering out from behind her cellphone. Her ears twitch back once, twice, disapproval practically carved into the lines of the poor dears face. “Terrible form.”

Bending down to pick up your cardigan, you offer her your toothiest grin. “Are you a critic now, dear?” The oliveblood’s on the floor, clutching his jaw, but for all that his eyes are shifting sunset red, you don’t think he’s getting back up. Not with the way he’s keening. “I didn’t know I was being graded.”

“Not being graded. Simply matter of practicality.” She takes a step back as you straighten up. As she should, for all that she’s just a smidge taller. This isn’t your office! This is hers, and that means you don’t have to obey. You could cull everyone in here. Paint the halls up like a pupa’s first Carnival, and so long as she got out without nary a speck of paint on her hide, Queenpin wouldn’t have a single thing to say.

But that’d be boring. And you’d only hit him in the first place to make up for the black mottling the end of your cardigan. You click your tongue, fingers worrying at the yarn. “Then stow the commentary, darling,” you suggest. “I mean, gosh, it’s not like I was giving a presentation. It’s just a little demonstration on good manners, common courtesy, how not to act like a wriggler who’s never heard of basic fucking footwork -”

A cool hand wraps around your ankle. You have just enough time to look down and make eye contact with the furious stare of Ullane’s coworker, before the ground tilts - and then comes rushing up to meet you.

RICCIN KAYATA | 5 SWEEPS, 12 YEARS OLD
temasek, hanhai district [4855 words]

“This,” Ico whispers, leaning in so that his curls brush your cheek, close enough that you can feel the feedback from his psi pinging off your horns, “is the blessing of being yellow, my little buttercup, and don’t you ever forget it.”

He’s got the two of you floating far, far, far above the crowd: with your feet tucked in, you’re not near enough to ruffle any heads, though you do have to kick up and out of the way when some eight foot monstrosity with a rack almost as long goes skating underneath. And she’s not the only one! You’ve never seen this many highbloods in one place before, and you’ve never seen so many nearly full-grown. You’d always thought you were big. You’re a head taller than Nzinga, and all of the crechekids but Kindra, and only a handspan smaller than Ico.

But there’s horns long enough to touch, here, and Ico has to boost you up higher when you start to reach down.

It’s an easy adjustment for him to make! He’s not as strong as you, maybe: Ico’s all finesse and style, those silly little kicks that send him flying across the stage, the psi-knives that cut right through his combatant’s strings, or joints, or throats. If Nzinga was here, you don’t think he could manage all three of you, not at all. But she isn’t! It’s just you and him, and he keeps you both up like it’s no problem at all. When he straightens back up from his whisper, you can’t even feel the pinch of his psi on your skin, he holds you so careful.

Which is good, you think, because getting dropped right into the middle of Carnival would be really, really bad.

Technically, you’re not even supposed to be here.

You’re old enough to roam where you want, do as you will: it’s only the ickle five sweeps that have to worry about pangomom haunting their steps, and you’re very nearly six, close enough and old enough that you could spit. You don’t go as far as you used to, when it was you ‘n Myrrha 'n Li 'n Weeds, but that’s 'cause it doesn’t make no sense to, that’s all. The world’s big, and scary, and your lusus isn’t allowed out of the city. When you’re older, Cu keeps telling you, then they’ll let you take her anywhere you want, but for right now, she’s got a collar and a charm that won’t let her out past Temasek.

And Kindra can’t leave, and Raphae fusses, if Ico’s gone too long, and for a grub who grew up on a farm, Nzinga’s no fun: she whines and she fusses if she doesn’t have a roof over her head, and she wants all of her food cooked. It just doesn’t make sense to go too far, with all of that. You don’t let yourself go past Cascara, not ever, even when you want, and you don’t let yourself go to full Carnivals, neither, even though you want.

Usually. You’re just a half-paint! A proper Carnival full of adults is no place for you. That’s how you get culled. Would they get in trouble afterwards? Sure. But it’s not like that matters much to you, when you’re face-down in some cullpit!

But Ico had mentioned he was going on one for a date, as casual as anything, and, well -

- he’s just a half-paint, too, and he ain’t even serious about it. He gaffs off the hymnbooks like they’re fun, not real, and he sneers at every priest soon as their backs turned. And if he was going, then why shouldn’t you?

You’d been a little surprised when he’d actually agreed to it. But here you are now, with his arm slung around your shoulder, bobbing above the crowd to watch them work, and the girl he’s got next to him is busy making sure the lot of you don’t get seen. And here you are, fucking wasting it, 'cause you’re not watching the crowd at all.

You’re watching her.

You can’t help it! She’s all horns and fangs, with a set of hooks that curve down even farther than yours, but more important than that - you’ve just never seen a psychic without ports, that’s all, but the base of her neck is bare, bare, bare.

Ico’s whispering to her now, something too dim for you to hear. Carnival’s so loud! You’d thought that the half-paint liturgies that you’ve been going to were raucous enough, but the noise here’s so wicked you can feel it in your bones, echoing and echoing and echoing 'til there’s no room for nothin’ else. But she seems to hear him well enough, because she laughs, mouth wide enough to set off those fangs.

When you tug on his sleeve, he waves you off, tilts his head just enough for you to see his mouth. You can read lips!

And he’s gaffing you off, telling you to enjoy the show.

Maybe you should! The first time you’d seen Carnival, all those ages back, back when you were a wriggler fresh to the program, you’d been awestruck by your first Navigressor tent. There’d been purple draped from the top to the bottom, beads hanging like raindrops from the clouds, and the air was thick with a thousand things you’d never smelled before. You’d never seen that many people in one spot before, not at Lang-Kheh, not even when Liyiji had taken you out to watch the boat race, and the water had been crowded with the flags of a hundred million different boats.

It’d been loud. It’d been wicked. It’d been the best thing you’d ever experienced, from top to bottom, and it’s nothing at all compared to the sea of people churning below you. You can see everything from up here! That’s why Ico hauled the two of you up, and had his girl following. The whole event’s spread out like the most glorious fucking banquet, all ready for you to feast your eyes on. There’s singing. There’s dancing. There’s fuckers demonstrating paint techniques behind the high walls of tent stalls that you can see right over.

For fuck’s sake, there’s a FayGo fountain, and they’ve got heretics lined up to be doused in it. The trolls down there aren’t like the ones in the cullpit: if they’ve got voodoos on 'em, they’re weak, because they’re foaming and hissing, even though they’re scarcely even near it yet.

But you keep sneaking looks at Ico and his girl, instead, who’re back to whispering. She’s leaning in now, her hair falling like a curtain around the two of 'em, and you can’t even see their faces to take a guess at what they’re saying.

Not that you care.

“Ico,” you murmur, tugging hard on his sleeve, “why doesn’t she have any gear?”

It’s like watching a film! He rolls back his shoulder, then he sighs, deflating like some motherfucker is pulling every ounce of air out of his lungs, and he ain’t got none left to breathe. The look he gives you is mournful, sure, but there’s an edge to it, too, the sort that promises he’s gonna whine about this later.

Behind him, the girl laughs, a hand in front of her mouth.

“Darling!” Has there ever been anybody in the whole wide world who’s made an endearment sound so salty? “Honeyblossom,” he says, and for all that he’s mouthing the words, you just know there’s an edge to it: “- you can’t just ask that, you little feral.”

“Brotherrrr~, I just did,” you deadpan, but he’s already holding up a finger.

“So you did! But that doesn’t mean -” The girl leans in, places her head on his shoulder. It’s so affectionate! Nzinga’s almost never that affectionate with you. “- that doesn’t mean,” he says, with scarcely a falter, “that you should! Ask me later, honeybunches, how’s that, and then we’ll cover it out. For now -”

He places a hand on your face, thumb firmly on one side of your chin and fingers braced around it, and then he steers your gaze back to the festival, just in time for the heretics to reach the fountain. You can’t read what he’s saying after that, but the pat on your cheek says enough.

Not that you’re paying much attention.

You didn’t realise they were gonna get drowned.

He doesn’t explain it later: he drops you off at the academy and fucking bails instead, because Iconic Conetl is nothing but a liar and a goddamn traitor.

But that’s alright! That’s perfectly fine, 'cause you got others folks you can ask, and you never needed him none, anyway.

Sipara just blinks at you when you ask her. “Uh,” she says, eloquent as fuck, and then she squints, wrinkling her nose. “Why would she have ports, nerd?”

Sipara’s always enjoyed being a brat. She’ll answer your questions, though, if you phrase it right, and lay out the right bait. She’s never liked nothin’ more than hearing the sound of her own blather, and she likes sparks more'n even you do.

“'cause everyone’s got ports!” Stomping your foot’s too pupa-ish even for you. But you can roll back your shoulders like Ico, lift your chin, sneer down your nose, and the way she rankles in response is /great/, 'cause she can’t match it. What’s she gonna do? Get on a chair?

And from the way she twists her mouth, all difficult, she knows it.

“Nobody in Hanhai has 'em.” You don’t even know where she gets this tone sometimes, all prim and shit. It doesn’t suit her! It makes you want to pinch her 'til she’s hissing again, acting the way she ought.. but you’ve got a better way than that.

“Everyone in Hanhai’s half-feral and wretched,” you declare, and oh! There go her ears, straight up in the air, like you’ve brought down the most dour kinda offense. “They’re losers and wrastels. They don’t know their ass from their head, on accounta the fact they can’t read none, and they’re 'bout as smart as the dead outside -” You pause, contemplative, and wait. Soon as she opens up her mouth, you’re ready: “- nah, nah, girl,” you say, loud, watching the colour flood her cheeks, “they’re dumber, 'cause at least the dead ain’t there, tryin’ to grow shit in a goddamn desert – oof!”

Sipara’ll give you all the answers you want, if you lay out the right kinda bait.

Unfortunately, sometimes she takes it a little too well.

So your second try, after you get some ice for your poor fangs, is with Canvio.

Canvio’s always holed up in the library! You don’t get it. At least Nzinga has good hobbies. When she’s not at the gym, or at the ring, or at hymns, or trying to ruin your entire goddamn life, she’s.. well, you don’t really know what she does, other than that, but it’s gotta be interesting. She’s Nzinga. She’s never had a boring fucking night in her whole, entire life.

All Canvio does is read, read, read, and suck up to folks when she ain’t. And sure enough, when you poke your nose into the bookdome, there she is, sitting on the edge of a table, chattering up a storm at some neophyte still in his dress unis.

“I think it’s just amazing,” the boy says, leaning forward, his fins flaring as he picks up speed, “that we have this much variation in laws, honestly. I mean, consider! The culling distinctions are fairly different between provinces, of course, but that’s not laziness, that’s just - think of it like pieces in an engine. We have thousands and thousands of parts, and each one needs to work together as a whole, but by necessity, the crankshaft needs to function differently than the shocks. They work together to make the car move, but they aren’t the same, and it’d never work, if they were.”

“That’s - um, that’s a good point.” Canvio’s twisting her hair around her finger, her free hand drumming against the table as she tries to think. She’s finally grown into her ears the last sweep or so, and it’s about time. They’re still too heavy to sit up proper, but they scarcely go past her shoulders, now. “But -”

You don’t know the violet legislacerator. Indigo? Those are fins on his mug, sure enough, but his face ain’t strange in the way that the proctors are! There’s /dents/ in his skin, dimples, not just sleek fat, and he actually blinks as he talks, like his eyes don’t just stay wet on their own. And his teeth are flat enough that he can actually bite into his lip without shredding it. “But?” he prompts.

“But the proctors think it’s silly.”

He actually dimples at her, opens his mouth -

- and you clear your throat, leaning forward on the table with a thump of your hand against it.

“Girl,” you sing, showing your fangs, “sister, I just hate to interrupt this fine fucking discussion, but I got questions, and you’re the only one who can answer 'em. The only one in this whole building! The only one in this whole world. And it ain’t my intention to intrude - it ain’t my intention to fucking burst in, but, but -”

“- you’re going to do it anyway?” the boy offers.

“- but I’m gonna do it anyway,” you confirm, and Canvio turns to face you, her ears swinging with the motion. If she was anybody else, you’d think that was a frown ghosting around the corners of her mouth, a reprimand jostling for attention and just waiting to get out. But you’ve known her since her ears were hitting the ground. Ire isn’t a word in her dictionary.

She just blinks at you, slow and languid, and then smiles, her brows knit just so. “Iunno how I can help you, Riccin.” She’s always so quiet, quiet, quiet: your ears are still ringing from the noise from Carnival and Sipara’s clout across the head, and you gotta lean in just to catch her cant. “I’m sure I don’t know the sort of thing you.. um, that you might be interested in.”

“Nonsense! You know everything.” Flattery wins every soul over, doesn’t it? You’re pretty sure you heard that. The indigo makes a curious noise, and you look at him side-long. “Hasn’t she told you that, brother?”

“Liable. And no! She forgot to say,” he says, amused. “I mean, obviously, she’s pretty smart, but.. everything?”

“Oh.” She’s flushing. “Um. No, not everything -”

“Everything,” you confirm cheerily. She’s turning as red as a bottle of the proctor’s hemming. “Girl’s got a mind like a steeltrap. Can’t forget anything, not ever, not once she hears it! She’s better than a fucking computer.”

The indigo - nah, Liable - looks from you to her. You can see the moment the thought clicks in his pan, that this is who he’s been talking to, and maybe Canvio does too, because she squares her shoulders, and even her snub of a nose scrunches up like she just smelled something sour. "Riccin,“ she says, plainative, and this is as close to a reprimand as she’s ever gotten with you. "What do you want?”

And maybe it’s 'cause she’s so plainative that you just spit it out. “How come some folks get ports?” you demand. “'cause I saw a girl without 'em in town, and she was still using her psi, and everything.”

“.. not every psionic needs ports.” She’s back to twirling her hair around her hand, watching you through her lashes. Canvio’s only a little shorter than you, but she acts like she’s so much smaller. “Was she part of the program?”

You think of Ico, and the way he doted on her. He doesn’t like the rest of the program, aside from you and Sipara. Sometimes you think he doesn’t even like Iphige, for all the attention he pays her, and she’s his fucking moirail.

“Nah,” you say.

“Then that’s why.” She nods, brisk, and then slips into that tone you’re used to hearing from her testing: the slight drone that sets the base of your horns to itching as her powers kick in. “Amplification ports were developed in the sixteenth cohort cycle of our empress’s reign,” she recites, “as a tool to aid in the development of her Dreaded Condescensions’ newly fledged fleet. The first institution to use them formally was the Imperial Dreadnought Core: soon afterwards, they became standard in the Imperial Education Program, before spreading throughout the remainder of the empire’s government.”

She blinks. Switches tracks. “Tonight,” she says, eyes shining faintly with gold, “they are common amongst the upper cohorts, but high prices and the lack of availability makes them rare in the leading cycle. Amplification ports are primarily found in members of early Ascension programs, such as the IEP, IPC, PSC, RFP and MANTRA, and the installation of flight-accessible ports in pre-Ascension citizens is illegal under statute 78.C.23-A, without the prior filing of permission and a signed referral stating intent of use by a fleet official of at least ranking 8-A-C.”

Liable’s staring, when you glance his way.

“And that’s.. maybe why she doesn’t have them. I think?” It’s queer, the way that Canvio swaps back to reality. Her psionics go out, and just like that, so’s her confidence. “I think,” she adds again, worried. “I.. it’s hard to know for sure, unless I saw her. Did you think she needed them? Because, ah, I don’t think - well, not everyone does.”

“Maybe they don’t need 'em, but -” Even Sipara has ports, you want to argue. You’ve helped her strip off her arm before! It’s all hamburger meat and jagged lines where she cut straight through it, badly sealed as if she’d used crazy glue to fix it, but there’s a port there, buried into the scars and flesh of her wrist. “- shouldn’t they have them?” you argue, and you’re gonna say more, but Canvio’s looking at you.

It’s the same way lots of folks have started looking at you, lately, and the words die on your tongue.

“Why.. um.” She licks her lips, turns away so that she can watch you from the corner of her eye. “I don’t think -”

“I don’t see why they would,” Liable says, rallying. He’s leaning forward on the table now, fins drooping even as he peers at you. “If you can use your abilities without them, why would you want tech put in you? And if you’re not going to do something with your psionics -”

“Brother, why the fuck wouldn’t you?” Something on his face shifts, but it’s only when Canvio flinches that you realise your voice’s picked up. But you can’t help it. This conversation’s making you antsy in a way you can’t figure out, except that they’re not fucking getting it. “We have 'em for a reason,” you snap. “If you ain’t using 'em, the fuck are you but a joke without a punchline? What’s the point of it? Might as well crack open your pan and scrape it clean, if you’re rebuffing what the fuck you’re made for -”

And he’s looking at you strange now, too, like you’re saying something worth staring over.

You swallow the rest of your lecture, turn on your heel and fucking leave.

Your third, and final, attempt is with Kindra.

Myrrha won’t understand! Myrrha gets squeamish about her own port; you caught her with jade under her nails the entire first sweep she had it, and all she has is the sort they give wrigglers, scarcely bigger than your thumb. Liyiji doesn’t care, and wouldn’t see it as relevant to the either of you. Sometimes you think he doesn’t even remember you’re not blue, the way he acts!

Weeds.. well, you’re not sure what he’d care, either, but that thought’s stranger, and it sort of stings.

But Kindra’s more kin than any of the rest of them. Kindra’s your castemate, and your friend, and the only fucker with as much gear in him as you’ve got. He’s let you sprawl out in his apartment for the nights after your surgeries, when every piece of flesh in your body is griping about the new additions, and you’ve seen him when his neck’s still swollen and yellow, and he won’t let almost nobody come near. Everything you’ve been through, he’s done, too. Every proctor exam you’ve taken, every night you’ve spent hooked up in some chair, running test after test to see how shit’s playing out - well, some of that, he’s even done more'n you.

If anyone’s gonna get it, he will.

And lucky for you, he’s in his block when you come pounding on the door, hollering loud enough that some idiot down the row pokes their head out. “Kindra! Kindra!”

“If you don’t stop knocking,” he says, flat and dull through the wood, “I’m not opening it.”

There’s one problem with Kindra, and that’s that you can’t just slip on past him. You gotta orchestrate your moves! He’s like Canvio, but worse in every way: all you ever gotta worry about 'round her is the fact she’ll remember every little piece of everything you ever do, and the proctors like to go rifling through her pan. So you can’t ever do anything they wouldn’t like in front of her, or they’ll hear about it. It’s not too bad, though. It means she’s always happy to see you, on account of the fact you’re one of the only fuckers who doesn’t care.

It isn’t like you ever do shit the proctors care about, anyway.

But Kindra remembers everything he ever touches, not just sees, and he remembers it forever and ever: a list of all your sins, all your actions, every thought that you might ever have fucking had. It’s a wretched kind of thought! Not for you, necessarily, 'cause what do you have to hide? He’d probably do better if he had your stuff jangling in his night long to keep 'em company, and keep his spirits up. He’s grumpy enough as is. And it’s not like you’d mind, considering it’s /him/.

But every time you try to imagine knowing every cringing, slinking thought in Canvio’s head - having her permanently bouncing around - it makes your skin crawl.

So you sidle past him, instead, careful to keep your hands and arms in, and when you get in his hive, you flounce immediately over to his couch. There’s a spot that you’ve decided is yours, though you stopped short of carving your name into it. When you fling yourself onto the arm of it, knees braced, shoulders and head sprawled across the back - you can shift just right to watch Kindra on the other side of it, dramatic as fuck, and no risk of tipping right onto him.

Nah, if he kicks out, you’ll just tip off the back. As he’s fucking proven, a couple of times.

But he doesn’t kick at you this time. He just closes and locks his door, then settles onto the other end of the couch, watching you. “Well? What’s got you in a knot this time?” he says, and it’s so fucking strange, seeing him without the mask. Sometimes you forget he’s got a mouth under there! A mouth, and a face, and a whole slew of expressions that you never, ever get to see.

Except right now, while he frowns.

“Well?” he demands, and there’s a hundred things you could say, if you could figure out how. Nobody fucking gets it. Nobody gets it, and you don’t understand why, 'cause it’s clear as the stars in the sky. She didn’t have a port, and she should’ve. What’s the point of psi without it? Shepherd’s always saying that a psionic without one’s useless as a dog without a leash, and it’s true! Your job is to serve the Empire. It always has been, ever since you hatched out and started sparking.

How’re folks supposed to do that, bare-necked?

How can anyone else stand the thought there’s folks out there, not doing their goddamn duties?

Maybe, if you had enough time, you could figure out how to say something like that. Maybe, if Kindra wasn’t watching you, and waiting, and you weren’t so riled.

What comes out, instead, is: “- d'you think we need ports?”

He squints at you.

His ears aren’t big like yours! They’re like Li’s, smaller than Sipara’s, but just big enough to read. So when they twitch back, you take note. “They kind of suck,” he says, flat, but.. he doesn’t look at you like Canvio or Liable or Sipara all have started. His mouth just twitches to the side, and he slumps a little against the cushions, eyebrows rising up like they’re an afterthought. “But.”

“They’re necessary! Why’re you thinking about 'em? You’re going to give yourself ulcers.”

“I don’t have - whatevers!” He’s hanging around the legislacerators too much, you think, if he’s using that sort of terminology. That doesn’t even sound like a word, never mind a real one.

“Yeah, that’s why you’re gonna give yourself 'em,” he sniffs. “Try listening. Why? Did one of your weirdos say we didn’t?”

“One of the legis did.” His contempt is as familiar as the back of Shepherd’s hand. It’s sort of soothing. Everyone else can be strange, but Kindra’s always been on your level: he gets you, in a way that nobody else fucking does. And as far as you’re concerned, you think you do, too.

You’ve never tried to touch his face, after all, even though you could. Or his hand, or anything else! There’s plenty of trolls who see a fucker wrapped up like a mummy, and take that as a lark to try and push, but you’ve never been one of them. “The legi’s are dumb,” he declares, prompt. “Don’t listen to them. What do they know, other than laws? Nothing.”

.. even if right now, you want to. The couch is fine to drape on, but you don’t want to fucking drape on something. You want your lusus, or you want Ico petting your hair, or - something that’s more comforting than dead fabric under you, because every thought in your pan’s a fucking mess right now.

But Kindra can’t touch you, his lusus is too pointy to hold, and visiting hours for yours are over for the day. So you curl in tighter against the couch instead, with a whuff loud enough that you’re sure they can hear it out in the hallway. “I guess.”

“Well, I know.” He’s so certain, sometimes! There’s no hesitation as he leans back into the couch, reaches for the remote. “Do you want to watch a movie?” he offers. “One of your stupid romcoms. Get your pan off of it. There’s a new one out –”

“Would you still be friends with me, brother, if I didn’t have wetware?”

He blinks at you.

“.. of course I would.” So much for that confidence! You could’ve dropped a pin in that silence. You could’ve started a war, had a hand-fasting, died and been passed over by three different descendents by the time he musters up the answer. But at least it’s an answer, for all the fact that he is giving you a look now, one of the ones that means you’re being awful dumb. Sure enough: “ - you’re stuck with me now. /But/ that’s a really dumb question.”

“You’ve got a really dumb face,” you shoot back. Is that the answer you wanted? You’re not sure! You’re.. it’s wrong, for folks not to have ports. It’s wrong, and it’s awful, and it makes your neck itch, makes you want to scratch until your hands are painted, like Myrrha used to do. It means they’re wretched, and stupid, and useless - like pupas.

Like you used to be, before you came and joined the program.

But you shouldn’t think about this anymore right now! You want to, in a twisting kind of way: you want to dig into it 'til you’ve got it split open, 'til you understand every inch and corner of it, 'til there’s naught you don’t know, and the words come as easy as song. Would you be friends, if Kindra didn’t have a port?

That’s a good question.

He clears his throat. When you look at him, he waves the remote, impatient, and it’s a wonder, how much you can pick up from a sound. Exasperation, irritation, worry: everything he does is always like a ballad wrapped in a ditty, if you’re just payin’ enough attention.

So you huff: “- start the movie, brother.”

(.. you wouldn’t be, you don’t think, but you can’t imagine not being friends with Kindra, not ever. So you’d just have to get him one, that’s all - and oh, that thought smooths your hackles some. Maybe that’s what Ico’s doing, too.)

(Maybe it’s alright, if folks don’t have ports. Maybe it’s alright, even, if they think they don’t need 'em - 'cause maybe, just maybe, that’s what fuckers like you are here for, to tell them and show them that they’re fucking wrong.)

CW: 23 / 17 YEAR OLD AGE GAP, SEVERE POWER BALANCE, AN UNFORTUNATE LESSON IN "sleeping with someone who hates you will not make them not hate you".

ICONIC DISQUIET | 9 sweeps, 23 years old
PHERES DYSSEU | 7 sweeps, 17 years old

“It’s 3PM,” the television sings, “do you know where your clademates are?”

And just on cue, the door slides open.

The lights in the common room are dimmed. The curtains have been drawn shut, but this late in the day, there’s no way to fully block the sunlight: it creeps in through the cracks in the fabric, seeping into the floor in front of each window in golden pools that make your eyes water. You’ve told Raphae to get a better tint on the panes, but he likes the light. Says it gives the room atmosphere.

“And besides, babe,” he chided, last time you’d brought it up: “- why are you up at 3PM, anyway?”

The next time you start to complain about the light, you’re going to remember this: Pheres walking into the room, wearing enough white that it feels like a slap to the face. There’s white on his shirt, white on his pants, white painted in arching designs across both prongs of that obscene rack. He’s bright enough that he’s practically glowing.

No, scratch that: he’s taken out his lenses, and what you’d thought was an after-image is his eyes, glowing bright as two suns in the darkness.
He’s scrubbing at his face as he heads in. He doesn’t pay you any mind, not at all, not until you clear your throat.

“ID,” he says, startling.

“That’s me,” you drawl. You mute the television with your psionics and keep knitting, the click of your needles loud in the sudden silence. “The one and only! And where are you going, mister daywalker?”

He’s never quite dropped his hand from his face. But now it flicks up, fingers brushing close to his eyes before he forces it down. Forces: you can see the muscles in his arm going taut, drawn tense as the tendons in his neck.
His smile barely deserves the name. “.. funny.”

“I’m a regular comedian, sweetheart.” He’s lingering directly in front of your television, shifting from foot to foot, but when he notices you watching, he stops moving and lifts his chin. Behind him, the show’s flipped from the commercials back to the recital. But although you can see a familiar pair of horns bobbing behind him, you don’t gesture him to move. Not just yet!
You’ve seen Apollo Harley’s last performance a dozen times. But it isn’t often that Pheres comes slinking into the apartment when he’s alone! Why, usually, he doesn’t even risk it with his moirail.

He’s usually too scared. Too terrified, poor pupa: he’s grown in sweeps and inches since Sipara first hauled him in, with his scabbed over face and his cullbait eyes, but he’s never really changed. Never stopped suspecting you were one bad day from culling him, as soon as Raphae turned his back.
There’s something flattering about that level of fear! But he hasn’t been cowering at the sound of your very name, lately. And right now, he isn’t even quaking, poor dear. Why, he’s acting like he’s not scared of you at all, and if it weren’t for the were holding his body taut, maybe you’d even believe it.
He’s scared, but he’s refusing to show it. That’s something new! And that’s far more interesting than any old recording.

When he slinks forward, you click your needles together, a loud clack that stops him mid-step. “Now, don’t ignore me! That’s rude, sugarhorns.”

“.. my apologies. I didn’t expect you wanted to chat, given that it’s so late, so. Ah. I’m going to bed.” The ‘obviously’ hangs silent. “Raphae gave me a key,” he adds, so sweet and pleasant that it almost makes you pause. It’s the sort of tone he uses on Raphae. It’s not one you’ve ever had directed at you, not from this half-grown sprig: Pheres’s always been sharp and anxious, the few times Sipara hasn’t spoken for him. “Presumably the offer still stands?”

“Well! It’s not like it’s my hive, sugarhorns,” you say, blithe, “so if Raphae said you can stay, I guess that’s that. But the guest room’s that way.”
You wave with a needle over towards the far hall, but all Pheres does is laugh. Then he grins at you, sheepish and lopsided as he threads a hand through his hair.

“Ah.” He’s darker than Raphae. The white of his clothes feels blinding even in the light of the room, bright enough that it makes you want to squint as the sunlight catches on the gauze, turns it irisdiscent. “Yes, I realise,” he murmurs. “I was going to Sipara’s, actually.”

“Sipara’s asleep, dearheart, like all good, little pupas.”

And that gets you a frown.

“I’m not going to wake her.” Patience is layered thick as syrup in his words, softening the edges. No wonder Raphae likes him so much: he’s nearly as cloying as one of his co-stars. “I’m just going to sleep -”

“In her recuperacoon?” you ask, raising your eyebrows, and your needles click together as you start the next row. “Just climb in there, smelling like you just dipped yourself into a vat of vodka? Booze and sopor doesn’t mix, fourprongs! You’ll wake her right up.”

“And that’s no good.” You click your tongue, shaking your head. “Sipa-dear has actually been working all night, unlike some of us,” you inform him. “She needs her rest! And not to have it ruined worrying after why her moirail’s come limping in at 3PM, looking like the most bedraggled dandelion in the field.”

“Did you actually go out like that, by the way, or did you lose your glasses along the way? Oh! ‘scuse me, sweetpea, glasses and lenses,” you say, helpfully. “Don'tcha know those are expensive? I know that our little rust makes bank, but that’s no call to get careless!”

He lifts his chin. “Sipara doesn’t pay for me,” Pheres says, prim. “Or for my clothes. But, ah, thank you for your concern! But I assure you, I’m not going to wake her up.” There’s nothing on his shirt, but he dusts the front of it off all the same, fingers tugging at the end of his sleeves and straightening them out flat. “I’ll see you in the evening. Enjoy your..”

He glances towards the television. You missed the first blood, listening to him; there’s maroon on the floor, but the poor schlub who got cut is nowhere to be seen. Pheres’s nose wrinkles as Harley’s shoe skirts the pool, close enough that the fabric wrinkles from the heat of it. “.. show,” he says. “Enjoy your show.”

Then he turns and stalks towards the back hall.

You let him take the first three feet. Of course you do! Garbed in white or not, Pheres isn’t exactly a sight for sore eyes: that ridiculous rack of his is long enough to make some of the church-rats jealous, and it’s glossed, to boot, the rough arches gleaming gold in the sunlight. With the curls catching around it and the horns curling on bottom, even you have to admit, it’s kind of fucking gorgeous.

And the rest of him sn’t quite a sight for sore eyes, either.

So you let him take the first three feet, then you snatch hold of him with your psionics. Pink tangles around his ribs and shoulders, and you spin him mid-step. When he stumbles, it’s right back into the recreationblock.

“Hey, there,” you say, amused. “I think you got a little confused, spacecadet! Understandable, really, considering your awful drinking habits, but I’m pretty sure I said the guest room was thattaway.”

The look he gives you this time is infinitely more familiar. “Yes, you did,” he says, mild, but there’s that sharp edge you’re used to. Except it’s fascinating, really, because for once, it’s just him: he’s not peeking from behind Sipara’s shoulder, like she’s the worst kind of meat-shield, like she could really do anything if you decided to cull him.

It’s just him, chin up, nose high, like he’s got any right to look down on you. “But I’m not heading there.”

He turns on his heel. You give him another two feet before you spin him around, and this time, he actually flails when the pink lights of your psionics snap into existence.

It doesn’t do anything. He snaps a hand through one band, breaking it, but you’re already tugging him right-ways with the others.

“To the left, sweetheart,” you say, helpfully.

He actually hisses at you. You’ve spent too much time around Riccin and Sipara! When his ears don’t flip back to match, just stay all stiff and round, it actually throws you.

What throws you more is the way he flares up a split second later, eyes lighting up like embers in the night. Psi snaps off of the corners, bright enough that you can hear the whine of it at the edge of your range.
“Stop it!” he snaps, baring his fangs so the light hits them, and wouldn’t that just be a sight, if they weren’t nubs?

“Well, good job, fourprongs, that was practically fucking eloquent.” The ding of your protocol is still new. When Raphae had said he didn’t like cursing, you hadn’t realised how far his definition spread: it feels like someone puts a finger to your node and presses, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough you know it’s there. “Maybe if you say please,” you drawl, trying to ignore the intrusion, “I’ll consider it.”

He just looks at you.

And then Pheres takes a deep breath. When he closes his eyes, the room dims, the light fading down to something almost managable. When he opens them, the glow’s dimmer, too, a slower hue that matches the slow rise and fall of his chest, and it’s a nice effect, you’ll give him that.

“Iconic,” he says, slow and proper, each syllable in that clipped, rural accent of his. He’s grown a few inches in the past few perigees! Seems like everyone’s been doing that, except for you: he’s gained the two, maybe three inches he needed to catch up with Sipara, and he’s tall enough to actually look down his nose at you from the couch. “Might I please go sleep in my moirail’s room? As is her stated preference?”

There’s so much condescension layered in his voice. You let the question hang, because there’s something absolutely precious in the way his breath picks back up in response. Has he always imitated Raphae like this, and you just never noticed? You’d known he was a little cuckoo, but the way he’s holding himself - like a proper little blueblood - is amazing.

“Well,” you finally say. “That just didn’t sound very sincere, sweetheart.”
“Stop calling me that.” Three steps, and he’s halfway across the room, his knees bumping into the coffee table in front of you. The glass figurines on top shift, clinking into each other, and you tsk, reaching out to fix where a ceramic kitten nearly fell to the edge. “Careful,” you scold, but he doesn’t pay you any mind, none at all.

“And what is your problem?” he demands. “Being her auspistice doesn’t make you her keeper. She has a lusus, Iconic. She doesn’t need a second one. And she has a moirail. We always sleep in the same recuperacoon.” Frustration leaks in. “I’m not going to wake her up. For heaven’s sake, I’m her moirail. I think I’m a lttle more concerned about that then you.”

“But you’re such a bad one, pupa.” His eyes widen. Then he flushes, red flaring fire-bright in his cheeks. “Oh, sorry,” you laugh, “do you prefer me not using that, either? Sugargrub. Sweethorns. Fourprongs, how’s that –”

“I don’t see how you can judge bad moirails, considering yours is going into the helmsblock.” A beat.

“Or is that your preference?” he says, prim. “I know how your.. religion views such things.”

.. well!

Scratch that. He’s definitely not afraid of you anymore.

You blink at him, watching his face to see if he’ll realise how much he just erred. But Pheres’s chin is up, and his mout set. The jut of his upper horns would almost be threatening, if they weren’t curved over his shoulders, the tips blunted and round.

“My religion,” you repeat, curious, and he gestures sharply towards his cheek. Now that he’s mentioned it, you can feel the black bars on your skin. You’d forgotten to take off your paint after the performance - and of course he’d think you’re a part of the Navigressors, with grease still on your hide.

It almost makes sense. That’s so noteworthy, with Sipara’s little cullbait. “Really? Don’t you mean the clade religion? Because I think you’re a little out-numbered.”

“Sipara’s outgrown it,” he says, peering down at you through his lashes. “It’s a shame the rest of you haven’t.”

You’re not entirely sure what’s changed since the last time you paid any attention to Pheres! Sipara’s spent whole twilights furious about him dealing with bluebloods: maybe their shitty pride has rubbed off. Maybe this is just liquid courage, turning from some cowering rust to someone worth noticing.

You don’t really care why: you like it.

The sunlight to his back puts his face in shadows, and then the light of his psionics set his features into sharp relief. His features look stone-cut in the darkness. The set of his body language is downright imperious. If you slapped fins on him, they wouldn’t be out of place - but why bother with fins, when he’s got that curling rack?

No wonder he’s got that brace on his neck. Between the weight of both sets, it’s a wonder it hasn’t just snapped.

It’s a wonder someone hasn’t snapped it!

But seeing this half-grown sprout try and get belligerent at you is the best entertainment you’ve had all night.

“But it doesn’t matter,” he continues. His chin’s up, but now there’s amusement seeping into his voice, too, sweet and poisonous as bad well-water. “You realise you can’t actually stop me, don’t you?”

He lifts a hand, and snaps. There’s a buzzing in your horns, seeping all the way down into your horn-bed as energy builds - then light flares at his fingertip, pooling down into the bed of his palm as it grows. Psionic tricks like this are a dime a dozen. Doesn’t mean the way the light creeps across his skin, darkening the hue and bleaching out the white of his clothes, isn’t attractive. “It’s Sipara’s hive, too. I can go anywhere in this block that I want. I was being polite,” he emphasizes, eyes narrowed, “in asking, instead of just jumping.”

“I wasn’t actually asking permission.”

Oh, right. That’s what his power was.

(What sort of maroonblood teleports?)

“Isn’t that just sweet of you?” He doesn’t slouch, at that, which’s a surprise: his lips thin instead, his horn tilts up. If he were a more interesting troll, he would’ve growled. It’s a shame he isn’t. “D'you want a medal, fourprongs? ‘cause I’m afraid I’m all out.”

“It’s a good thing you were polite,” you add. “Just imagine what might’ve happened if you weren’t! Why, some cullbait vagrant just storming into my matesprit’s hive, in the wee hours of the night. Barging into my poor auspitice’s room. What’s a fellow to do, in that case?”

“I mean, just look at yourself. I’m surprised the security bots even let you in through the door, to be honest!” He opens his mouth. You laugh, waving a hand, and unfold yourself from the couch.

Pheres stiffens, but he doesn’t step back when you step forward. He doesn’t flinch, either - and isn’t that just a disappointment? “Oh, honeypie, I know you’re on the admissions list,” you drawl, “but look at yourself. You look like a goddamn ghoul. If they had any sense, they would’ve culled you, just to be sure.”

“But I guess you’re just lucky like that.” He tucks his chin in, tossing his head. On anyone else, it’d be a horn toss. On him, it’s just absurd. “Unfor~tunately for you, my little raspberry, I’m just not as forgiving as the bots! If you try to do your little bunny-hop in, my darling sprite, I will haul you out personally, how’s that?” You place a hand on his shoulders. He’s coiled tight under you: if he gets any tenser, he might just break.

Poor thing.

And you don’t want to break him. Sipara would get upset, bless her heart! But you do dig your nails in as you lean in, and your smile’s as thin as his lips. “Or ma~aybe,” you drawl, “I’ll just do all of us a favour and haul you out the window, how’s that? Sipa’ll get over it –”

When he tenses, you know he’s going to do something. but you’re not expecting him to slam those absurd horns right into the underside of your chin. Your head jerks up even as you start to twist away, and he takes advantage of that. His hands plant firmly in your shoulders and he shoves, hard.

Sweeps of experience should keep you upright! But momentum wins. You fall, hitting the coffee table, and distantly you hear the tinkling of glass shattering. More relevant is the way you haven’t let go of his shoulders, though. Pheres writhes like a snake, fangs bared, but you haul him down with you.

Your ass hits the edge of the table, then your shoulders. Instinct alone has your horns hitting the soft carpet with a puft, rather than the wooden edge. And there’s bony knees digging into your hips, and bony fingers digging holes into your shoulders. Above you, Pheres is as wide-eyed as if he was the one that just got fucking shoved.

“Did you just break my cats?” you demand, incredulous, and letting go of his shoulders, you fumble around you on the carpet. Everywhere you touch, there’s glass.

This close, with the dark of the ceiling above him, you can make out the faded bloom of his pupils, faded pink behind the glare of the white. Before, he’d flushed. Now he’s just red, the colour creeping up like a rash.

When he realises you’re staring, he laughs, brittle and high. “I did you a favour. An undeserved one. They’re fucking terrible.” His fingers curl in, his nails biting into your bare skin. “I’m not going to apologise,” he adds. “You deserved that.”

You really, really should cull him for this. Half of those figurines are collector’s items! They are unique and precious to you, and worse yet, they’re irreplaceable. They don’t even make them anymore! You can feel the shards digging into your back through the fabric of your cardigan, undoubtedly ripping holes into the weave of the fabric. But unlike your poor figurines, you can always replace the sweater.

And right now, even with dollar signs dancing in front of your eyes.. you can’t bring yourself to be too irate over the figurines. Pheres’s half bent over you, knees framing your hips, his claws digging into your shoulders. This close, he’s warm as the sunlight on his back, and when you shift, letting yourself get a bit more comfortable on the ground, he doesn’t move.

He just exhales, a little shakily. This close, you can smell the vodka on his breath, but it doesn’t matter: he’s a psionic, and his eyes aren’t dull. He’s burned it off. If he hasn’t, he will.

“Besides,” he adds, “you can’t complain. You’re not even bleeding.”

“Yet,” you say, and shrug your shoulders. “Watch your nails, pupa, they’re sharp.”

Pheres blinks, looking down at his hands like he forgot they were there. Then he jolts up, eyes wide, nervous laughter bubbling up like foam from a spritzer. “Ah -” Surprise sets in. For a moment, he’s straight as a board, sliding back like he’s able to pull off of you entirely.

But he doesn’t. He looks down at you, eyes wide, then he relaxes, inch by inch. “Don’t call me pupa,” is what he says, waspish, even as he clasps his hands in front of him. (No blood on his claws, but he actually manicured them, and they’re as white as the gauze on his arms. It’s absurd.)

“I already told you that. I have a name.”

“So Sipara’s told me, unfortunately!” It’s a little hard to focus on anything but the glutes on your hips, honestly. You shift, bracing an elbow behind you, and look up at him. Pheres isn’t half-bad looking from this angle, all things considered! If he didn’t keep talking, you’d focus on that.

But he doesn’t seem keen to shut the fuck up. “Right. She’s told you.” He shakes his head at you. “She’s told you all about me, and us, and I’m sure she’s mentioning me every time I so much as message her,” he says, and it’s not bragging: he states it as a fact, crisp and clean and without so much as an edge of doubt in his voice. “Because we’re moirails. And that’s what moirails do. You’re so concerned about me waking her!”

“Well, how do you think she’d feel about this? Me scrapping on the ground with you, like we’re a couple of lowbloods?”

“.. are we scrapping? Last I saw,” you note, “you’re the one that took a swing, darling. And now you’re just sitting on me.”

He flushes at that, but when he shoves at your shoulder, breath so terse it comes out as a hiss, he doesn’t move.

Oh, you should move him. You know you should, honestly, and you can hear Raphae in the back of your pan, dubious, as loud as a pan nanny: “- are you robbing the school creches now, Iconic?” But you can’t bring yourself to care.

He’s pretty, and he’s warm, and if he’d just shut up –

Well. You can’t say you’re averse, not when this is getting fascinatingly caliginious. Caliginious is a strong word for it, maybe: you’re not precisely certain what he’s doing here. The only thing you’re sure of is that he has no idea what he’s doing here.

If only he’d shut up.

“That’s not moirallegience,” you say, because you can’t resist an opening, and Pheres is nothing but them: he’s targets upon targets, all there to be fucking prodded. “That’s co-dependence.”

Pheres swells. “What do you even know about quadrants?” he demands, flustered, fucking aghast. “You don’t even care about the ones you have! I’ve never even seen that yellow that you and Sipara are all about - you don’t have pictures of him up, you don’t have his name up. On anything. I’ve checked.” He’s emphasizing each word, gesturing with a hand as he talks. “Or Iphige’s, or.. even Raphae’s, for heaven’s sake. And he’s your matesprit! Most people would have his face plastered everywhere.”

“So many questions! Are you trying to pile me?” Pheres’s been frowning. Now he genuinely scowls. “Because,” you say cheerfully, “you’re getting awfully personal –”

“Do base accusations usually work to distract people? Sipara uses them, but she’s seven. I rather thought you’d learn better by ten!” He pauses, takes a breath. “But it makes sense. No wonder you’re so worried about Sipara and I’s relationship.”

“You’re projecting,” he declares. “That’s a little embarrassing, don’t you think?”

There’s a hundred different things you could say to that. There’s a hundred different retorts! You’re not going to be shown up by some half-grown adolescent. And somehow the tables have shifted. He’s amused, and you’re not.

“Nine,” is what you manage, irritated at him, irritated at yourself. (Two sweeps. Eleven is looming like an omen, but you’ve still got two sweeps until you’re plugged in, and Raphae has his matched set. Two sweeps, and you’re not going to let this scrap of fabric take one from you early.) “I’m nine.”

“Really? With all the mention of pupas, I was certain you must be at least ten. Maybe eleven!” Maybe you twitch. For the briefest moment, Pheres’s eyebrows knit. Then he grins, shakes his head. The motion sends his twists spiralling. “Heaven only knows you’re the oldest person in the hive. Still.. that’s an entire sweep until you’re conscripted. Such a difference,” he says, poisonously bright. “However could I forget? Nine, and a few perigees. But that poses another question!”

“How, exactly, are you so bad at quadrants?”

Somehow, this isn’t amusing at all.

“Codependence. Moirallegience. Really! Are you even serious? Is Iphige even your moirail,” he asks, pointed, “or is that just for convenience, just like your matesprit?”

“Alright, alright. This is absolutely precious, but analysing ID hour is over, I’m afraid! And you’re digging holes into my organs, sweetheart. So you can just move.” You start to push up. There’s glass digging into your elbows. The cleaner droids are going to have afield-day with this.

But Pheres is not moving. Pheres is just staring at you, eyes narrowed, chewing on his lip. “I don’t see why you care,” he says, irritated. “Are you going to let me go without - threatening to haul me back by my hair, or something savage?”

“.. I’m fairly certain I said nothing about hair, sweetheart!” He’s not moving. For all of your shifting, when you still, he’s still perched on your hips. “Have you been thinking about this?” you say, amused, eyeing him. “Because, sure, we can work that in -”

“Then we’re not done talking,” he announces, and slams his hands into your shoulders.

You let him push you down. He’s rougher than you’d have expected! Your horns hit the ground with a thump, and - alright, this’s progressing. Unexpectedly.

He’s still chewing on his lip. The skin’s pinched and colouring, the red bright under his fang. You’ve got half a mind to bite it, see if you can’t spill it properly.

If he doesn’t beat you to it first, because he leans forward, hands braced on your shoulders. “I don’t understand,” he says, frustrated. “It’s none of your business! This isn’t how auspisticism works! This isn’t your job, and it’s not - you shouldn’t care!”

“It doesn’t make any sense, unless..“ His breath catches. His eyes widen. If he had ears worth noting, they’d lift, but instead he swallows, hard, and practically bounces on top of you. “Oh my god,” he marvels, “you’re pale for her.”

“I can’t believe it.” His hair’s fallen out of those ridiculous ringlets and into waves. They’re tumbling past and around his horns, framing his face like a halo and blocking out the light. There’s no heat coming from the glow of his eyes! But the warmth in his voice scalds. “Oh, but - it makes so much sense.”

“I should’ve guessed, when you moved her in.” He’s picking up in speed. “I told her auspitices aren’t that kind. I told her you had motives.”

Raphae’s asked you before, exasperated, long suffering: don’t you ever get embarrassed? It’s always been a silly question. You don’t do shame!

Until, as it turns out, there’s a ninety pound bag of knives sitting on your thorax, casting all sorts of frankly unfortunate aspersions on you! You pride yourself on not caring, usually, but it’s remarkably hard to keep your balance with the bone-sharp jut of a knee digging into your hip, and the carpet doing its very best to add new holes to your back.

“Look -”

“No, no, my apologies. That was untoward. You’ve demonstrated that you’re such a kind hearted soul,” he says cheerily. “No, perhaps it was later. When you first saw her fighting? Good heavens. After you put her into the ring? This is just - I can’t believe it.”

“You don’t care about your moirail,” he announces, viciously pleased. “You don’t care about your matesprit. You don’t care about anything at all, except - blurring on my moirail. Don’t you think you ought to be paying attention to your own quadrants, ID? They’re your age.”

“This is just pathetic.”

“Oh, fuck off -” you snap, and midword, he fucking kisses you.

RICCIN KAYATA | 6.4 sweeps / 14 years old

SIPARA NZINGA | 6 sweeps / 13 years old

OA: oKAY, BULGEFACE, THAT’S ENOUGH WITH THE SHIT-TALK. WE GOTTA FOCUs.
OA: tHE HELL ARE WE GETTING ICO FOR HIS HATCHDAy?
AA: lololololol no stfu
AA: y wld i shrne
AA: so i can do the wrnk and u can take crndt
AA: l m a o n
AA: g fck yrnslf
OA: oKAY, ONe:
OA: i WASN’T ASKING YOU TO SHARE, YOU NUBBY-HORNED LITTLE MOGGy.
OA: tWO: MORE LIKE I DO THE WORK AND YOU TAKE THE CREDIT. AIN’T NO MIRTH TO BE FOUND IN GIVING A FUCKER A DEAD BIRD. THAT’S A REAL shit GIFt.
AA: stfu he liked it
OA: hE SAID YOU WERE A FERAL MEOWBEAST AND HE WAS GOING TO ABANDON YOU IN A GUTTER, SO YOU COULD JOIN YOUR COHORt.
AA: y y y
AA: but ddnt so he liked it
OA: >:o|
OA: lIKE I WAS ALL UP AND SAYING, I AM NOT asking ABOUT BUYING A GIFT, I AM stating THAT WE ARE BUYING A GIFT FOR HIM TOGETHER. ON ACCOUNT OF THE FACT WE’RE ALL QUADS AND THAT’S WHAT WE’RE SUPPOSED TO Do.
OA: yOU CAN BUY HIM SOME JUNK YOURSELF, IF YOU WANT TO. OR GO KILL ANOTHER BIRD. I DON’T CARE WHAT SWILL YOU CALL YOURSELF WRAPPING IN A BOW AND PASSING OFF AS A gift.
OA: eVEN THOUGh.
OA: iT’S GONNA LOOK ALL KINDS OF AWFUL SITTING NEXT TO MINe.
OA: jUST SAYIn’. :o)
AA: lol
AA: gtfo
activatingAggro has left the chat!

obstructedAntiquity is now messaging activatingAggro!
OA: mESSIAHS, GIRL, DON’T BE SUCH A CHUCKLEHEAd.

OA: cOME ON. ME AND ICO BOUGHT YOU A GIFT ON YOUR HATCHDAy.
OA: a REAL GODDAMN GIFT, NONE OF THIS DEAD ANIMAL SHIt.
OA: iT’S FAIR TURN ABOUT THAT WE GET OFF OUR ASSES AND DO HIM SOMETHING PROPER IN RETURn.
OA: aND WE GOTTA DO IT TOGETHER, DUMBASS, OR HE WON’T THINK WE CARe.
AA: so
OA: sO USE THAT LEAKY BUCKET YOU CALL A PAN, GIRL. IF WE DON’T CARE, WHY BE IN A QUAD? WHY TALK TO US AT ALL? HE’S PALLING IT UP WITH FISH AND PRIESTS, NZINGA. HE ISN’T EXACTLY NIPPING AT THE BIT TO KEEP UP WITH DRUDGES LIKE Us.
OA: tHIS QUAD AIN’T JUST ‘CAUSE HE LIKES OUR FACE. HE’S DOING US A MOTHERFUCKING FAVOr.
OA: wE GOTTA GET HIM SOMETHING NICE, OR ELSE HE MIGHT RECONSIDER It.
OA: dUh.

Every time you turn around, Riccin keeps getting taller. It’s not fair.

Course, this time, it’s ‘cause she’s wearing heels.

“Dude, take those off,” you hiss, ears pinning flat. “You look stupid! He’s gonna laugh at us! And what about the egg?” The two of you spent all day yesterday at a hatchery, trying to pick the best egg for him to get. ID likes birds! He practically collects ‘em, dead or alive, and some fancy broodhen that’ll grow up to make even more birds seems like the sorta thing he’d like. The one you got’s pink, just like his psionics, and it’s strapped to Riccin’s back in a pouch to keep it safe and out of the way.

Or it’d keep it safe, if she weren’t in fucking heels. Riccin can’t walk in heels! She’s practically trailing psi with each wobbly step, her eyes brighter than they ever really ought to be, and even if they weren’t, though, you’d still know she was cheating to stay upright. She’s been shooting up faster than she can get used to: the past perigee, she put on four whole inches, and she’s barely been able to run without misjudging it in her trainers.

When she sees you looking, she sticks out her tongue. It’s distracted! After only a split second, she’s back to staring at the ground. “Fuck off!”

You’re getting a crick in your neck looking up. This has to be an extra five, six inches to a troll that doesn’t need any, so now that you’ve asked nicely, you do the only thing you can do:

You kick her right in the ankle, egg be damned.

All of her psionics are focused on keeping the shoes steady on the ground. She’s not expecting an attack higher up! Her heel twists in the shoe, and it’s amazing how quick the psionics sizzle out, electric blue dissipating so fast it leaves dark streaks in your eyes. She doesn’t fall. It’s a shame! But her eyes go narrow and her ears pin back and she growls at you, deep and throaty like a congested grub.

“I am going to pull off those wretched nubs you call horns and use ‘em as a mortar.”

“Dude, you can’t even catch me,” you snipe, and take a step back.

She takes the challenge, just like you knew she would! She takes a step forward. With her face all done up in the half-paint she’s taken to wearing, she looks almost like an acolyte. Almost like she should be intimidating.

She isn’t, though, 'cause she’s Riccin: big-horned and clumsy and with spots on her face that she thinks paint’ll cover up. What’s the worse she can do? Hit you? There’s nothing impressive about that!

So you laugh at her instead, and her next step is too wide. Her foot slips in the shoe. She goes toppling head-first towards the ground. Her arms fling out. Her growls turned screechy with rage, and it’s great: she’s floundering, trying to twist as not to land wrong, but she’s too caught up to remember she can catch herself with her psionics.

When you step forward, she lands in your arms with a plompf, heavy enough that you stagger. Not from the weight! Just from the size of her. She’s big, but she only weighs about the same as ID, 'cause everyone you know’s just a sack of bones.

“Shit, gi~irl,” you sing, “if you wanted me to hold you, you could’ve, like, just asked.”

Her face is the most godawful shade of yellow. She snarls at you, trying to wriggle half-heartedly free. The elbow to your gut barely hurts at all, and you wrap your arms around her, burrowing your face in her headfluff. “I’m going to bite off your face,” Riccin threatens, but if she wanted loose, it’d be easy as shoving you her with psionics.

All she does instead is flail until you finally lose your balance. You topple, shrieking, but the gravel that digs into your skin when you hit the ground’s nothing compared to the thump when she lands on top of you.

There’s pointy limbs digging into your spleen. You whine, ears going back, but you’re opening your mouth to complain when something sticky starts leaking on your knees.

“Riccin, you idiot! The egg!”

ID squints at the two of you.

“You got me.. a decorative egg-shell,” he says, carefully, like the time he tried to copy your southern common: like the words don’t quite fit proper in his mouth, but he’s too nice to just spit them out. “Well, isn’t hat just the sweetest thing anyone’s ever fetched me.”

“I like the spots. Almost my shade of yellow, even! And the glow. Did you stick a light-grub in here?” he says, dubious, and shakes it, pressing his ear against it to hear. “Oh! No! It’s plastic. Isn’t that just quaint?”

“It’s for luck, lah!” Riccin says, ears pricked up and forward. Then she seems to realise she’s being excitable, and she jerks her chin up, peering down her nose instead. “Which is good,” she adds. “For a person like you. For your performances, yeah?”

“Are you saying I’m bad at my job, my little lemonhead?” He laughs, raising his eyebrows, and shoves the egg under one arm so he can press a hand to his cheek: “- because that’s just plum mean to insinuate on a fellow’s very own wiggling day!”

Riccin doesn’t really beam anymore. All she ever does is her sideways grin, where the entertainment’s creepin’ up and she doesn’t really want to show it. “I ain’t saying you’re bad,” she says, “but brother, you could use some luck. I mean, just sayin’, all things considerin’ –”

“You don’t need luck! You’re great, Riccin’s just bein’ a bulgemunch. ‘cause, like, we got you a hen,” you chirp, “but we broke it and then Jahhiz told us we’re not allowed near it again, and he took it, so we got you a lucky egg, instead, ‘cause, like, did you know it cost like, twenty caegars? Each? That’s a lot! And I was like, no, fuck that, I’m not gonna drop another twenty on Ico, that’s dumb, let’s get the fake egg, that’s, like, ten –”

“Stop talking!” Riccin shrieks, and shoves you. With a squall of outrage, you shove her back, and a moment later, the both of you are on the ground, hissing like meowbeasts.

SIPARA NZINGA | 14 years old / 6 sweeps

“So, like, how’d you lose your arms?”

“Sipa!” Pheres snaps.

Beside you, Iphige hasn’t so much as acknowledged the question. The four of you are sprawled out across the recreationblock, and an hour ago, you’d each been working on your own projects. But then Iphige had peeled off her arms, one arc of golden psi at a time, and started painting.

Now you’re all just watching as she works.

There’s lights still on, but her psi’s the brightest thing in the room. As bright as the sun, maybe! Watching it sure hurts like it, but you can’t tear your bulbs away. It might sting, but the way she’s pushing and tugging the paint through the air in pencil-thin rivers is too pretty to miss.

The thin plastic of her prosthetics are floating in the air above her. The paint streams wind around it, leaving streaky designs as they twine in reds and golds and indigoes, and you don’t know what she’s painting, but you don’t really care.

Not when there’s more important things to ask about!

You’ve never paid Iphige much mind: the metal circlets on her thighs and shoulders were just a thing, like Pheres’s newfound love of white claw lacquer, or ID’s jewelry. But you’d never seen them without her arms plugged in, though. They’re just metal and steel, with strands of pink-purple tucked deep within.

When the light catches just right, you can see them pulsing.

The way she’s painting is pretty. But the stuff going on inside of her arms is fascinating.

“Or, like,” you persist, leaning forward, “did you cut ‘em off?”

Beside you, there’s the thump of a book hitting the ground. “Sipara!” Pheres sounds two seconds from hissing, but you don’t have to pay it any mind: he hasn’t actually smacked you in ages. All he does anymore is hiss and fuss and hiss some more, like that ever does anything. “You’re being rude!”

“Let go of your pearls, pupa, it’s fine.” ID’s sprawled out in Raphae’s chair, his feet kicked up on the arms, the dumb smokestick dangling out of his mouth. You thought he was asleep! But no, he’s watching her, just like the rest of you, his face blank in that way it only gets when he’s looking at her. “We were making bets on when she’d ask, anyway.”

“I won,” Iphige says idly.

“She did! Much to my surprise. You failed me, sweetash,” he informs you sadly, and his mask breaks when he blows a cloud of smoke right at you. “You just cost me fifty caegars! Now, I know you’re broke, so let me tell you, that is some serious cash. I said you’d ask perigees ago, but no! My pupa had to go and develop tact on me.”

“I was going to!” You shoot Pheres a look, but he doesn’t even have the courtesy to look guilty! He’s just going all red and blotchy instead. “But someone –”

“Ah, miss Sfumat – you don’t have to say, you know, if you don’t like.” You sit up with a squawk of outrage, because Pheres just cut you off, but he doesn’t pay you any mind. He just rushes on, stumbling a little over his words, fervent: “I mean, miss Sfumat, if it’s something - ah - unfortunate - or painful -”

“It wasn’t painful.” The paint is still all aglow with the light of Iphige’s psionics. She doesn’t look his way. “They gave me anaesthesia first,” she continues, and Pheres falls silent.

He’s looking a little pale, so you scoot back, bump your shoulder against his. When he leans in against you, he’s stiff as a board. He always gets squeamish about everything: bruises, blood, the scrapes he used to come back after his deliveries. (But you took care of that, last time he came back from that cerulean’s hive, and he hasn’t had so much as a scuff since then.)

“Why’d they cut ‘em off, though?” you repeat to her, wrapping your arm around him. “I wanna know!”

A few minutes later, you regret asking.

Here’s what you knew:

The Imperial Education Program is a thing. (“A thing,” ID says, derisive: “- amberlove, it couldn’t hurt to be a little more specific!”) A thing that takes in psionics, and trains them, and teaches them to fly.

When you say that Riccin says it’s a good thing, ID laughs. Iphige doesn’t. She isn’t much for faces: she always just looks tired, tired, tired, like there’s a weight on her shoulders she can’t knock off, and the only thing she can ever muster up energy for is spite.

She’s not really being spiteful when she tells you the truth, though.

Here’s what you knew:

Sometimes Riccin disappears, and comes back with new ports. He walks like it hurts for a week or two, until the bruises fade away and the skin stops swelling.

Sometimes Riccin disappears, and comes back with her psionics gone. The last time, it took a month for her to get her glow back, and the first thing she did was tip an entire table over onto your head.

Sometimes Riccin disappears for awhile –

– but you never really thought about where to.

Here’s what you knew:

Riccin says that joining the IEP’s a blessing. Riccin wants you to join the bioengineering branches. Riccin wants you to be an engineer, so when they’re a helmsman, the two of you can be together forever and ever.

(“What about my clade?” you asked them once, and they’d looked at you like you’d offered them an entire lemon. “They can come too, rustboat, if you’ve gotta,” they said, reluctant, like each word was a strain: “ - like, maybe as passengers.”)

Here’s what Iphige tells you:

Being a part of the IEP fucking sucks.

Pheres is looking pale again. You’ve wound yourself around him like a meowbeast, and he’s leaned right back into you. There’s a knee digging into the flesh of your calf, fingers curved tight around your shoulder, and it’s hard to tell where one of you ends and the other begins.

But you can still tell, ‘cause he’s psi-hot. Each inch of skin feels like he’s running a fever, same as always, and normally you’d never notice –

– but this is the first time you’ve thought about what that means.

“Oh, don’t look so glum, sugargrub,” ID drawls. His eyes are bright through the smoke. “Are you still jealous? I’m sure we can find a rig to put you in, if we ask Raphae nicely - oh, where are you going?”

“I think,” Pheres says, primly, shrugging off your arm, “I’m going to puke.”

Even ID doesn’t want to clean that off the carpets. Everything’s silent except for the scrape of paint until Pheres disappears down the hall, and then you rockc forward, weaving your fingers into the carpet. “But that’s not gonna happen to him,” you say, and it’s not a question.

“Of course it is!” He slouches further down into the chair, kicking out his heels. “Me, him, Iphie-dear, Riccin.. why, if Raphae doesn’t behave himself, I’m sure our most beloved proctor could find a place for him to make himself useful, too. It’s how our glorious empire works, sweetheart.”

“The useful get used,” he says, chipper, “and the useless gets culled to make room for them. Which, I’ll give you, is a not-so-small possibility for your little pitybait! What does he even do, Sipa-sweet? Does he have even hobbies? Because I think I’ve missed them, apart from mooning after my matespr–”

“I’m still talking!” he squawks, flailing upright as you scramble to your feet. Pheres’s in the back bathroom, but right now, you don’t want him out of your sight.

(He’s not useless. But which is worse: useless, or rigged up like Riccin? Like Iphige?)

RICCIN KAYATA | 4.62 sweeps / 10 years old
ICONIC CONETL | 7.38 sweeps / 16 years old
1,991 words

Tonight, you woke up to the acolytes dumping you out of your recuperacoon.

All of the rats were lined up and sorted out. The little two sweeps, fresh from the caverns and still hot with trial-rage, were kept hissing and spitting up front by the substitute lusus, her white tail wrapped to keep ‘em from getting at the rest of you. The three sweeps were next, most of their eyes still shut with slime.

“Follow me,” the creche-martinet said, when it came time for the four sweeps to take their place in the back. And you’d all followed, even though you didn’t have your paint on, and there was slime drying on your pajamas.

“Where she’s taking us?” Taufik whispers to you. His expressions are always flat in the way northerners get, with rigid ears and harsh gray skin and soft gray eyes that never show nothing, even when they ought. But the skin is all squinched tight under his eyes and his lips curled down hard, like he’s scared and he doesn’t wanna show it.

You shrug. (Everyone keeps gettin’ onto you lately for talking too loud. It’s easier just not to talk.) The martinet doesn’t stop by the servants doors, which means it’s church business. She doesn’t stop to let you put on your faces, which means it’s secular,which’s a word that ID says means reasonable and the dictionary marks as faithless.

She doesn’t stop at all, not even when Marien stumbles and nearly sets the line to toppling. So when Taufik takes your hand, fronds wrapping tight around yours, you don’t shrug him away, even though he’s teal and his hand feels like a fish.

Everyone knows creches get culled sometimes. The carnival’s big, bigger than any place you’d ever seen before, but it’s not infinite: sometimes they need space, and a kid gets taken out, and they don’t come back. Sometimes they need rooms, and a whole bunch of kids don’t come back. You’ve never seen it happen, but the older kids say it does, swear it up and down ‘til their voices run raw from the noise.

When the big red doors of the culling pit come into view, Taufik isn’t the only one in the line that starts whining.

But no one breaks. You all follow the martinet in, neat as lambs, and when she jerks her chin towards the wall, you all settle in. What else are you gonna do? Your lususes are all in the crecheroom still, still locked up tight in their dayboxes, and it’s not like the room’s empty. There’s people in the pits already, which’s a relief, and there’s folks up on the stage, which ain’t, not really.

And there’s ID, trotting over to you with a face like he’s eaten something bad.

“Riccin,” he says, heading straight your way, and he bends down, chucks you under the chin with a hand. He must’ve put on his own paint tonight, ‘cause it looks like shit: all streaky lines like he forgot the sealing spray, and gray smudges where it’s gone off entirely. “Tyrian tits, they’re doing this younger and younger, aren’t they? I’m pretty sure I was six when they brought me up. ‘least, Iphie was –”

“Doing what?” Taufik pipes up, and ID squints at him.

“They didn’t tell you? What are those chuckleheads even thinking -”

The acolyte’s over at the stage, where the rest of ID’s troupe - company, he keeps tellin’ you, like there’s any difference but in his fool head - is lounging. They don’t look any happier than he does, all thin lips and ears laid back, but the leader’s the only one speaking.

She’s close enough you ought to be able to hear her, but fear’s got everything garbling: all you’re catching is snatches and snippets, no matter how much you strain your ears. She’s one of those soft-voiced fuckers, you guess, and so’s the martinet. But if you can’t hear, ‘least you can see them. The leader says something, her eyebrows down, rolling the cigarette in her mouth like she’s all affronted. (It’s bigger than the one ID’s chewing on, thicker and brown, but the room’s still hazy with the smoke of it.) The martinet frowns.

Highbloods don’t spark, not like lowbloods do. There’s just a flicker of purple across her eyes, subtle as a fish in the water, and she’s pulling herself up, rolling back her shoulders so that she looms. The leader ain’t smaller than her, not scarcely, but it seems like it. It feels like it, even all the way from back here, and your pumpbiscuit skips a beat.

The martinet hasn’t grown an inch, but somehow, she feels massive.

The moment’s over too soon. The dread dissipates. The awe doesn’t. Even without her voodoos, the martinet’s still looming. Nothing about her’s stiff, which’s how the other kids get, when they’re trying to put the fear in each other: she’s loose, relaxed, but every inch of her’s like a promise of violence.

Maybe the leader’s awed, too. She must be, ‘cause she takes a step back and then turns on her heel, sharp-like, her cheeks green. She snaps something to the rest of her company, lips flapping too fast for you to keep track. Her eyes skim over the troupe, counting heads. Her eyebrows furrow.

“ID!” she snaps, loud enough you can hear it, and then you remember he’s been talkin’.

ID looks like you, from his nose to his lips to the funny way his cheekbones sit, but his ears are flat and fixed as Taufik’s. But unlike Taufik, his skin’s thin and his eyes are easy to read as windows. Right now, they’re bright, just barely lit with pink, and his cheeks are streaking yellow with distress, even as his lips curl into a smile that’s all lie. “And just remember, buttercup,” he says, bright and brittle and urgent all at once: “- this is strictly volunteer, you don’t have to do anything. Okay?”

“ID, stop playing with the pupas and get your ass over here!”

He bounces to his feet. “But they’re adorable. Coming right over, lovebug! No need to strain your voice on my account,” he calls, smoothing down your hair. The look he gives you is pointed, and he mouths something at you - then the leader calls again, words rasping with the rumble of her rattlereeds, and he bolts back to the stage.

The martinet gives him a look as she comes back to you, and stops in front of the line. “We have a very special class today,” the creche-martinet tells you all, voice high and clear. “The Regional Southern Ballet has agreed to demonstrate some basic culling techniques for you. I was given to understand that your classes have focused on crippling, rather than decapitation?”

All around you, the kids who’re in comballet are all bobbing their heads. You got picked for music, back when you were still wee: even then, the schoolfeeders took one look at you and said you were too big. It’s a shame! You like watching the shows, even when they’re only to first blood. That’s how you met ID, who always gives you tickets and tea, and who’s whispering something fierce now in the back.

“Excellent. This’ll be a good demonstration, then.”

She takes you to the edge of the pit and lines you up right against the railing, where you can peer down. There’s only a couple of people down there tonight, with one guard to watch ‘em. The only thing he’s watching is his phone, but maybe that’s alright: they’re all violet-eyed and slack-jawed, limpid enough there ain’t even chains to keep them in place.

ID’s folks are on the other side of the pit, leaning against the railings, still looking all sorts of fed up. The leader’s in the back, looking the sulkiest of ‘em all, like she just got smacked. And ID is at the front, hopping the railing like it’s not even there.

The pit’s ten, fifteen feet deep, but he lands as easy as he were hopping out of the coon, eyes all pink and hazy. The guard doesn’t look up, but one of the prisoners is taking jerky steps towards the center, all the same, stumbling like he’s fresh from the sopor and his feet ain’t quite working yet.

ID looks like his feet aren’t quite working, either, ‘cause he stumbles a bit when he spots the prisoner moving. There’s a club in his hand, tinier and more delicate than the ones the priests use, and he’s holding it like he doesn’t know what it’s for.

“Watch,” the martinet tells you all, “and learn.”

“Uh. Right. Hi, dears! Guess I’m the one demonstrating tonight. And let me just tell you, you are just the luckiest set of rats. Usually they reserve this kinda thing for the lead dancer, but I guess our beloved leader figured some lovely pupa’s like you deserved a pretty face. No? Oh, come on, Allete, dear, don’t make that expression, you’re gonna hurt my feelings -”

“- right, sorry, back on topic. Okay. Uh. Culling techniques. Right! First step’s en pointe.” ID’s voice’s shaking, which’s silly. You’ve seen him do shows over ‘n over again, and he’s never got nervous like this. Even his movement’s are a little jerky as he mirrors each pose to his words. “Hold it. Half-step forward, lunge, pirouette, and –”

All around you, kids are going hushed. ID pulls out of the spin, club low. You can’t hear it, but you picture it must be whistling: it looks like it ought to be, the way it swings low and then goes high, cutting through the air in the most perfect kinda curve. It hits the troll right under the chin, in the meat of his neck, striking the skin like it was made to be there.

The troll crumples.

“Voila!” ID says, breathless.

When he turns back to face you, the light catches the club. The end is damp.

“And. Uh. That’s one of the first techniques from the Ecchet method,” ID says. There’s sweat on his lip. He laughs like there’s a joke, then stops, rolls his eyes. “Though you already knew that, didn’t you? ‘least, I certainly hope you did! Basic history right there. Now, uh, I can go ahead and show you the second technique –”

“Not quite yet.” The martinet speaks up, and he goes quiet. His face’s going yellow again, but you don’t care why. There’s something jittering in you, like your pumpbiscuit but wrong: like there’s a sack full of moths in your digestion-sack, and if you open your mouth, they’re all going to fly out. The bodies still on the floor. It isn’t a troll anymore, not anymore, and the eyes are all yellow, like the absence of purple’s there to prove it.

The body’s still there, and the club’s damp.

The martinet clears her throat. She’s so much bigger up close, standing in front of all of you. She’s massive, and Taufik’s tense as a wire, and she isn’t even doing anything.

The moths are pushing at your throat, at your teeth, at your lips.

“As Conetl said,” she says, and behind her, ID twitches: “That was the first technique from the Ecchet method. It is one of the deadliest, one of the most efficient, and it is simple enough that it is the first that we teach every dancer. Anyone can perform it.”

“Would anyone care to try?’

The end of the club is damp, and in the harsh lights of the cull-pit, it looks like it’s glowing.

ID is looking right at you, eyes wide. Everything about him is saying you don’t have to do it.

“I want to try, highblood,” you burst out, eager, too loud, and behind her, he winces.

CW: age gap between a 17 year old and a 23 year old, exploitation of a minor

You never thought much about it, but Laledy’s about Bonnie’s age, isn’t he?

It’s not like he’s got the sort of face that invites that sort of comparision! Bonnie’s all bone and sinew, sure, just like him, but every ounce of her is pure muscle. You’ve seen the sort of damage she can do! She might not be through her adult molt yet. She’s still all adolescent gangle, with the sort of lankiness you can’t figure if it’s youth or real. But no one’s ever going to try to sell her school-feeds.

On the other hand, Laledy’s got the sort of face that makes him look like he still belongs in the caverns.

But that doesn’t mean much! Raphae was still sporting gray eyes until barely a sweep ago, and the last time you saw a picture of him, he’s only just outgrowing them. Highbloods age strange, that’s the problem with them. You’ll be dead before Bonnie starts going gray. Chances are, you’ll be long dead before this sprout stops looking like a pupa.

He isn’t quite her age. But he’s close enough! And Empress only knows she needs more friends.

“Grubadee, have I ever told you about my moirail?” you ask him, and at the other end of the table, he starts like you just hit him.

“Moirail? Wait, uh – you have quadrants?”

Well! That’s not the response you were expecting.

Instead of responding, you take a long sip of your tea. Taking Laledy out for lunch had been a lark. Why not drag the little cullbait out on a proper outing at night, for once, and do your good deed for the sweep? Let him get some proper moonlight on his skin before he burns it all off! He’d been excited when you first mentioned it. Downright pleased, really, and he’d only made two jokes about buying his favour.

(Still two too many! Slap some paint on this boy and you’d think he was a

clown, sometimes, his sense of humor is so awful.)

But he’s been acting strange about it the entire morning twilight, dragging his feet and bouncing in turn. You’d figured it was nerves! Sipara never liked buggies, the first few times she drove in one. But you’ve been at the cafe for nearly two hours now, it’s nearly dawn, and his mood still hasn’t settled any.

Of all the ways it might swing, though, you didn’t figur ehe was going to go off and get all rude on you. But you don’t even have time to tell him he gets to rephrase that before he’s already scrambling. “For reals, tho! Like, not even gonna lie, I totes thought you were, like, doin’ the lone ranger shizz, between like - the whole pancrackin’, and the code-monkeying.”

“It’s, like, thematic,” he hazards, chewing on his lip.

“Calm your spheres, sugargrub. I’m not offended,” you lie, setting down your cup. He visibly relaxes back into his chair. There’s just something so fucking sad about the relief in his grin: he’s Bonnie’s age, sure, but you’re pretty darn certain she’d never scrape for your approval like this.

“So. Uh. You have quadrants.” He says it like it’s some big surprise.

“Did I say quadrants? Shame on you, sprout, don’t put words in my mouth!” You click your tongue at him. “I have a moirail, sugarplum. Don’tcha know, our fine lady Q doesn’t require the rest of ‘em?”

The cafe’s owned by some girl like Taylor, a blueblood with her nose all the way up in places it shouldn’t be. No one even bats an ear the letter, or mention of ladies: half of the folks here look well past Conscription, and you know all of them can’t be imperials. It’s one of the only places you can mention the Queenpin without risking your neck!

Not that it stops Laledy from looking side to side, like drones are about to pop out from under the tableclothes. “LIke, what, no pitch-mate?” he asks, curious, and there’s something strange in his voice. Amusement? If he starts laughing, you might very well just leave him here. You don’t understand pupas. “For

reals? And no flush? Not even ash?”

You blink at him.

“.. no~oo. ‘fraid not!” You slide your empty glass forward, and then wave for a waiter. This is the sort of place that Raphae used to take you to after shows, and the sort of place you’ve missed, since coming back to Alternia. You don’t get to drag Bonnie out here often: she gets a little too restless to sit still this long, for all that it’s nicer than her flavor of ice-cream parlors.

Different tastes, you suppose. No one’s getting shot here, sure, but they took your chip at the door, so all you have to do is leave.

A little less excitement’s worth that sort of luxury!

“Is it that shocking?” You snort. “I’m flattered,” you add, amused, “that you think I’m just such an amazing commodity that my squares are just flying off the shelves, sweetheart. So flattered. Downright touched.”

He doesn’t laugh. But he does smile, a little weakly. “Dunno about flying off,” he snarks. “I mean, shizz, pal, you ain’t even got a sweater on. Thought knitwear was, like, your thing?”

“It is, it is.” The smile, the gab: he’s back into an upswing, thank the Empress. You’ll dump him at Taylor’s before he can drop back down. He’s just not very entertaining like this, when he’s acting like he’s being cowed at every corner. “But alas, my finest cardigans are all with my dear bluebonnet right now. Which ist o say, my dearest, most beloved and bedraggled of moirails. She’s probably ripping holes into them right now,” you say, mournful as you stand up. “Bless her heart. She likes adventure. And she’s your age - have I mentioned that?”

“I was thinking, sweetheart, the two of you ought to meet! You’ve both got such unique senses of humor, bless your little biscuits. Why, you’d get along like a house on fire.”

“.. um. You want me to meet your moirail? Like, won’t that be, hella awks?” A beat. “Or does she, like, not mind -” He’s standing up, but now he pauses. For a second, you think he’s going to gesture at his eyes. “- she work for mizz QP, too?” is what he settles on instead. He’s following your lead, stepping neatly around the table as you slip back on your jacket. The slide of his cane on the carpet is very nearly inaudible. “Or is she, like, the local, law-respectin’ sort?”

“Oh, absolutely,” you drawl, heading towards the door. “Don’t you know, my little sprout, that’s just my type? Law-abiding, proper imperial citizens only! No criminals, no cull-bait, certainly no girls with perfectly illegal transportation —”

Laledy’s been on your heels the entire way out of the cafe, the solid clack of his cane on the concrete behind you a ready reminder to keep your pace slow. But you’re still several steps from your buggy when you realise the sound has disappeared, and he isn’t actually following. You exhale, rolling your eyes up, and then spin to face him. “Laledy!” you say, sharp. “Sugargrub! What in the world is your -”

“So, um, is this, like, a date?” Laledy blurts out.

Well.

“Oh, shit. Uh, not that it’s gotta be - I mean, ‘course it ain’t, what’m I thinking, fancy food ‘n all is just, like - I was just -”

He doesn’t pause when you hold up a hand. He doesn’t stop when you clear your throat. But when you snap: “Laledy!” with just a touch of fang to it, he stops so quickly he nearly bites his tongue.

”Clearly,” you say, once he’s quieted down, “you want it to be! And who am I to crush your dreams?” Something about this seems a bit strange. But he’s very nearly Bonnie’s age, for all that he’s pupa-faced, and his eyes, if they weren’t blind, would be green. So it’s only a little outrageous, you suppose. “So, to answer your little question - before you went entirely off the rails - why not? You can get in the car, by the way!”

”Unless you’re planning on making this lot your new home. I mean, I guess it is nice, but just between the two of us, miss Queene’s couch is just a wee bit nicer.”

You linger by the car door as he clicks his way over, then you pull it open for him, holding out a hand to take his cane. “Here,” you say, and the look he gives you - wide-eyed, alarmed - earns him a laugh. “I’m helping, sugarhorns! Tell you what, I’ll even give it back when you get hive, how’s that?”

This is nicer than you would be in any other circumstances! But if you’re evidently just making his night, then there’s no point in doing it halfway. And the startled doe look is worth it.

”Hey! Uh, ID. Wait.” You’re sliding the cane into the seat behind him, but now you pause. Laledy’s worrying his lip, scratching at the side of his neck like he’s about to say something interesting. Tonight’s been full of surprises: you can’t even imagine what’s going through his pan, and you’re too amused to even want to guess.

.. not that you can help it. Maybe he’s figuring out a way to let you down gently! Break your poor pumpbiscuit over his accusations of a date, let you know he just doesn’t feelthat way, bless your heart. The thought’s endearing. And he certainly looks anxious enough for it.

You’re already thinking of a witty rejoinder when he blurts out: “– can I kiss you?”

Well. Isn’t that just precious?

”No,” you tell him, amused.

You don’t even finish the word before he’s deflating. His cheeks flood green, then his face. His ears pull back and down. “I’m sorry,” is the first thing he says, but not the last: the rest of his words are practically a slurry, they’re so mixed up, falling on top of each other like he can’t even be bothered to keep them straight. “I’m a dumbass! Soz, soz,sorry -”

“- you didn’t let me finish, you little cactus.” The first laugh had him quieting. The second one got you a frown, and now he’s looking – confused, still, but belligerent! Serves him right. Laledy’s mystifying, but he’s amusing, too, even when his mood keeps spinning every time you blink. “Stop writhing,” you order. “You can’t kiss me, but I’ll tell you what, dearheart -”

When you grab his chin, it fits neatly between your thumb and your forefinger. And when you lift his face up, he doesn’t object, just makes some queer sound at the back of his throat. “- I will kiss you. How’s that?”

”Yeah,” he breathes, shaky. “Okay.”

(writing theoretical character interactions)

One moment, you’re spinning her around to face Bonnie, a hand on her waist and one on her wrist. “Look what I’ve found,” you’d declared, raising your eyebrows. “An old friend, back when I was bright-eyed and collared! And let me just say, I do mean old, bluebonnet. Positively ancient! Old as my enclade, bless her rotting little blister, and twice as stingy –”

She’s rigid in your grip. Shock, probably! You hadn’t expected to see a face so familiar in a station like this: the last time you’d seen Teresa, she’d been so very official, wearing the dignity of her office like a cloak. The dignity’s still there, but it’s worn. But whereas her eyes had gone wide - and who could blame her, when you’re not exactly up to old standards, either - you’d only hesitated for a moment.

A troll like this is a liability! A problem, really, and if you’re lucky, the sort that can be resolved with an airlock. A little harsh, maybe, but old grudges die hard. It’s been sweeps and sweeps since you last saw her, but that doesn’t stop the vicious surge of glee warming you from stub to frond.

“- and just like my enclade, did you know she’s an Imperial? At a party like this,” you laugh, rolling your cigarette to the corner of your mouth, all the better to grin. You lean in, fond and mockingly quiet: “Teresa, darling, sweetheart, what in the Empress’s name were you thinking –”

And the next moment, the floor’s flying up at you.

You manage not to fall. Old habits kick in and you catch yourself, do something with your feet that leaves you facing her even as you blink the spots from your eyes. (Some of them. The world’s pink, pink, pink, and the snow falling at the corner of your vision has nothing to do with the hit. She’s indigo. How the fuck did you forget she was indigo?)

She’s saying something, but you find you don’t really care.

There’s blood on your fingers when you touch your mouth, orange that glimmers in the station’s light. The cigarette’s not there anymore, and all you can taste iron. When your tongue brushes your fangs, hesitant, there’s a jolt of pain all the way up to your eyes.

“Oh my goodness,” you marvel, and you don’t bother to swallow the blood.

(There’s rage, bright and incadescent and stronger than anything you’ve felt in whole perigees, but more than that, there’s excitement.)

(You can’t believe she hit you.)

(You wonder if she’ll try again.)

You smile.

“Well, sweetchecks, it’s just a pleasure to see you, too.”

ICONIC CONETL | many perigees in the future

When she calls, you come.

The Silence Before The Tridents Fall was old long before you hatched. The records say that it was one of the first to leave the planet, back in the mad rush of the first major exodus. You don’t know if that’s true, but it’s had over a dozen finned captains, and when you’d approached it in your shuttle, it’d looked ravaged by time. A dull metal relic, its hide mottled from centuries of repair.

The crew doesn’t look much better. The helmscolumn is an old style, integrated directly into the bridge, and trolls mill around you on every side, moving through their work with the ease that comes from centuries of doing the same thing. They don’t look at you. They don’t look at anything, really. They move like they’re sleeping, and if it weren’t for the green glow of their eyes, you’d wonder.

Iphige’s eyes are still amber. The dead thing locked in the wire beside hers aren’t, though. Its eyes are lime, and its body is linked into hers, bone knit to bone, mind knit to mind.

“His name was Nihilo,” she says, faintly displeased, and you flinch. It’s not that you expect her lips to move. Helmsmen aren’t people, not really: their voices are static and code that pours out of the speakers, and they don’t bother with their pilots. Even sitting here, facing hers, feels like a mis-step.

But Iphige’s speakers aren’t mounted to the walls. They’re the people milling around you, each movement perfectly matched, each word a mirror for their neighbours.

It’s been three hours since you boarded. You’d have figured your husk would’ve stopped crawling by now.

“Sorry, sweetheart.” You lean back in your chair, let your eyes drift up to the coil of wire above her head. She keeps it well-trimmed. Or her captain does? (You’ve seen no sign of a captain. You try not to think about that.) “Didn’t mean to stare. I was just thinking about.. ah…”

“You want to leave.” No matter where her voice is coming from, you’d know the tone. Tired. Bland. Just the faintest hint of recrimination, like when you first said you had to go, and she could come with you or not. But although you chew on the end of your cigarette, let the silence hang, she doesn’t scold you. Doesn’t say the all things you know must be banging against her teeth, begging to be let go.

(She shouldn’t be in some ancient patrol ship, cruising the edge of Imperial space. She should be in a church ship, surrounded by her subjuggulators.)

(And you should have been there with her.)

“Don’t go,” she says instead, and it’s not through her crew. It’s her voice, cracked and rusty and raw. “Please. Just stay.”

SIPARA NZINGA | 6.4 SWEEPS / 14 YEARS OLD (1823 words)

Raphae always leaves the door to his respiteblock unlocked. He says it’s because he wants to make everyone feel welcome - he’s got all sorts of shit in his room, real fancy stuff that’s got no place in the rest of the house like his clothes and his weapons, and he’s always harping on about how you and Pheres should feel free to use any of it.

But that’s just bull he likes to spin. There’s all sorts of shit in there he doesn’t want you handling! Like his guns. The first time he walked in and saw you playing with one, he went as white as a daywalker, and the next night, every single one of them was behind a lock. Fucker.

Other things you’re not allowed to handle: his knives, his rail’s books on biology that he keeps up on the top shelf and that you have to bribe to Duckdad to knock loose. All the liquor and candies he keeps hidden away in his drawers, like that stuff’s worth hiding. It doesn’t even taste any good!

His fancy highblood paint-pots.

You’re pretty sure he’d have hidden those away if he’d ever thought twice about it, but neither you or Pheres have ever shown much interest. Why the fuck would you? You and Pher decided ages ago that two of you have got to be the prettiest motherfuckers this side of the district. You don’t need paint to cover your mugs!

At least, that’s what you’ve always thought. But lately, it’s been bugging you that everyone at Carnival is always wearing paint, and you’re not. Most nights, you’re the only bare-faced pupa in the whole, entire tent, and everyone likes to make sure you know it. Especially the big indigoes.

If it weren’t for the fact Riccin’s always trailing you like the world’s most annoying shadow and ID’s always hanging in the wings, ready to intervene - like you’re the one trying to start fights with everyone! - you’d have probably gotten snatched up for club practice already.

As is, they sure do fucking like to call your symbolhight for tithe. ID calls it the price of being a flatscan in church. You call it fucking hoofbeastshit.

It’s not fair! If you were wearing paint, no one’d think you were anything but one of the dumb churchrats, and you wouldn’t stand out at all. (You like standing out, but not when they make you bleed for it.)

And if Riccin got to wear paint, why shouldn’t you? You know the hymnbooks way better than she does, even the really stupid bits that don’t make any sense no matter how much you read them.

“Flatscan bitches don’t get to wear paint,” Riccin told you last night when you’d asked her, “because you fuckers are paint. You gonna cull your ‘rail and wear ‘em on your mug, Nzinga? ‘cause that’s fucking nasty.”

And then she’d refused to share hers, even after you punched her.

All of your stipend goes into Pheres’s bank right now, and you’re not sour about it: the fuck do you need caegars for, with a hive over your head and food in your digestionsack? He’s the one out in his silly cart all day, working on those books, surviving off of his dumb coffee, and you’re happy to help him out any way you can.

Except it turns out paint costs cash that you don’t have, and you don’t want to go crying to ID for it. He’d give you the caegars, but he doesn’t like the fact you started trailing him to Carnival in the first place. If he knew it was for paint, he’d tug off your ears.

But Raphae goes out every day all decked out in paint, and even if it’s the wrong type - all neutral tones and lowblood hues, with a little bit of violet for his moirail and indigo for his job, not the white and black and gray that you need -

Well, you figured you could make it work.

But it’s not working. The paint’s going on all wrong, clumping and peeling off your skin as it dries, and the rest of it isn’t doing much better. You keep poking yourself in the eye with the charcoal stick, and the lines you’ve managed are fucking awful, all streaky and shaky instead of the smooth swoops that both he and Riccin wear.

And the fact the stupid birds won’t shut up isn’t helping. Most of the time you go into Raphae’s room, all three of ‘em will come bustling after you: Bennue to snoop, terrordad to see if you’re stealing him more sweetmeats, and duckdad usually just 'cause he fell asleep on terrordad’s back again. You don’t bother to keep them out. They’re lusus! They’re supposed to be, like, able to go wherever they want.

You should’ve made 'em leave, though, because after the fourth time you poked yourself in the eye and started to get mad, they all started getting fussy. Bennue just lectures, but terrordad actually tried to make you leave, hooking his big beak into the sleeve of your shirt and pulling. You’re too big for him to actually haul you, like he does with Pheres, but he tugged and tugged until you were sure it was going to rip, and you had to fling pots at him to finally get him to leave.

And now the other two are nesting up high on the mirror. Bennue keeps making reproachful noises at you like you’re the one being awful, but worse is the way turtleduckdad is just crooning. Like you’re a fucking wriggler, throwing a fit.

You’d throw jars at them, but that’d just prove them right. And if Raphae comes back to find his bathroom a mess, he might legit murder you.

When duckdad sets off crooning again, though, you’re starting not to care.

“Shut up!” you yowl, and the charcoalstick snaps in your fronds. They’re shaking. When did they start shaking? Why are you so awful at this? “Shut up, shut up, shut UP!”

“Don’t yell at the birdies, pupa,” ID drawls from the doorway. In the mirror, his eyes are narrow, and his voice is his usual, snide drawl: “You’ll wake up Iphie.”

You can just barely see terrordad behind him, feathers all afluff, his head hanging down low. He’s still got indigo ink all over his face where you flung the pot at him, and he won’t look at you.

“Your pop’s a fucking traitor,” you tell ID, hunching your shoulders, and you drag your paint pots closer. You’re not going to throw paint at the lusii, because they’re small and they finally just shut up, but if ID’s come in here just to nettle you…

“I’ve been told that.” He’s just standing there, not saying anything, and this should be okay. It should feel better than him trying to talk to you, but it doesn’t: the longer the silence hangs, the more your soundstem is tightening, until it feels like the words are building up and you’re going to burst from the effort of holding them back.

Sometimes you wish you could chatter, like your rail: words come easy to him, bubbling up like fizz in a spritzer, but you can’t figure out what you want to say. All you have is a desperate sort of unhappiness, building tighter and tighter in your belly, and if you don’t start gabbing, you’re going to burst.

You don’t know what to say. You don’t even want to say anything, not really, but ID is just standing there, his own paint impeccable, and it’s not a matter of want: you’ve got to say something, or it’s starting to feel like you’ll die.

“It’s not fair,” is what you finally manage, snapping off the words. You slam your palm down on the desk hard enough that it makes the pots on top skitter. That’s not good enough. You want to break them, snap them, ruin them: leave them looking like you feel, all sharp points and broken edges. Raphae can cull you for ruining his stuff. You don’t care. “I just –”

“Why can’t I be like you?” you say, and it comes out as a wail.

ID stares. He’s gone all wide-eyed and quiet and he’s not saying anything, just looking, and it’s not helping. This was supposed to help! You hiss at him, your ears going back, but now that you’ve started talking, you can’t seem to stop. “It’s not fair! Everyone else wears paint, and everyone else’s got powers, and - and - so should I! Why don’t I?”

The world’s going hazy with red. You swipe furiously at your bulbs with the back of your mitt until they ache and your hands gone all rusty, but at least the world’s clear again. Mostly. “Oh,“ ID says, flat. “Pupa. No.”

The air lights up with purple, so thick that you can almost feel it on your skin. The remnants of the charcoal brush gets tugged free from your hands, and then the pots go skittering back on the table, far out of your reach.

“You daft little widget. What’d you want to go and be like me for?” Everyone in this hive is so tall: it only takes him two, three steps to get over to you, and that’s not fair, either. You should be the tallest person, but instead you’re just itsy and runty and small –

“I’m just an old fussbucket, remember?” He snatches Raphae’s fancy blue rag from the clothholder, and the way he mops up your face, careful not to let the clothscrap scrub at your skin, is nicer than his voice. (Thank god. You don’t think you could deal with it if he was trying to speak nice to you.) “What’d you call me yesterday? Worthless old fancyfoot?”

“But you have psionics.” Your voice is all low and reedy, and you could just bite yourself. You sound like Pheres. You sound weak. Ugh.

“And what d'you think you need those for?” And maybe he agrees, because ID flicks you in the horn with a lacquered nail, hard enough that you hiss. The purple’s faded. His eyes are just his usual yellow-on-yellow, familiar and mean and bright. “There we go,” he says, pleased: “There’s my little thresher. Look at this!”

He yanks you in close to him, a hand pressed to your newly clean cheek. Before you can react, he’s tugging at your seedflap, pulling up your upper lip so you’re snarling in the mirror. “Three inch fangs! And you’re built like an antlion. You know how many trolls would kill for that? You wouldn’t have that if you were a sparkplug, dearash.“

You snap at his fingers, making sure you stop right before you hit them, and he laughs, releasing your face and curling them in tight. “Hell-lion,” he corrects himself, fond. “You don’t want psionics, sweetgrub. You don’t need them.”

“Riccin says –”

“And what’ve I told you about listening to what the clowns say?” He clicks his tongue, and taking you by the shoulder, steers you away from the mirror. The clothscrap’s all crumpled up on the desk where he left it, and the whole thing’s a mess, but he doesn’t seem to care. You guess Raphae’ll clean it up.

That’s fine. Raphae won’t get mad at ID. No one ever gets mad at ID, not for long.

Not even you. He ruffles your hair idly, pulling you in close as he leads you to the recreationblock. “Riccin’s an idiot,” he tells you. “You’re better off the way you are, Sipara. Trust me on this.”

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December 2018

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FIC: iconic conetl, dust 'em off
FICTION: iconic conetl, rated b for blowjob jokes
FICTION: iconic conetl
FICTION: iconic disquiet, bruises that cover your arms
FICTION: iconic conetl, one hit ko
FICTION: riccin kayata, learning about helms
FICTION: iconic conetl, bad decisions
FICTION: sipara nzinga, disasterclade - gifts for id
FICTION: sipara nzinga, disasterclade - tough lessons
FIC: riccin kayata, learning to clown
FICTION: iconic conetl, kiss the boy
FICTION: iconic conetl, teresa (au)
FICTION: iconic conetl, you can't go (AU)
FIC: sipara nzinga, a childhood memory

i will cut the dragon's feet

i will chew the dragon's flesh

Entries tagged with iconic conetl

FIC: iconic conetl, dust 'em off

DUST ‘EM OFF (PUT 'EM BACK UP ON THE SHELF)

6TH PERIGEE OF THE 760TH SWEEP
ICONIC CONETL: 10 SWEEPS / 21 YEARS OLD

FICTION: iconic conetl, rated b for blowjob jokes

ICONIC CONETL | 11 SWEEPS / 23 YEARS OLD

FICTION: iconic conetl

THERE WASN’T ANY WATER IN THE WISHING WELL

FICTION: iconic disquiet, bruises that cover your arms

ICONIC CONETL | 8 SWEEPS / 17 YEARS OLD

RAPHAE IRRIGO | 7 SWEEPS / 16 YEARS OLD

FICTION: iconic conetl, one hit ko

ICONIC CONETL | 10 SWEEPS / 23 YEARS OLD
nott terminal, near-alternian space
g. a fistfight.

FICTION: riccin kayata, learning about helms

RICCIN KAYATA | 5 SWEEPS, 12 YEARS OLD
temasek, hanhai district [4855 words]

FICTION: iconic conetl, bad decisions

FICTION: sipara nzinga, disasterclade - gifts for id

FICTION: sipara nzinga, disasterclade - tough lessons

FIC: riccin kayata, learning to clown

FICTION: iconic conetl, kiss the boy

FICTION: iconic conetl, teresa (au)

FICTION: iconic conetl, you can't go (AU)

FIC: sipara nzinga, a childhood memory

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December 2018

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i will chew the dragon's flesh

Entries tagged with iconic conetl

DUST ‘EM OFF (PUT 'EM BACK UP ON THE SHELF)

6TH PERIGEE OF THE 760TH SWEEPICONIC CONETL: 10 SWEEPS / 21 YEARS OLD

ICONIC CONETL | 11 SWEEPS / 23 YEARS OLD

THERE WASN’T ANY WATER IN THE WISHING WELL

ICONIC CONETL | 8 SWEEPS / 17 YEARS OLD

RAPHAE IRRIGO | 7 SWEEPS / 16 YEARS OLD

ICONIC CONETL | 10 SWEEPS / 23 YEARS OLDnott terminal, near-alternian spaceg. a fistfight.

RICCIN KAYATA | 5 SWEEPS, 12 YEARS OLDtemasek, hanhai district [4855 words]

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6TH PERIGEE OF THE 760TH SWEEP
ICONIC CONETL: 10 SWEEPS / 21 YEARS OLD

ICONIC CONETL | 10 SWEEPS / 23 YEARS OLD
nott terminal, near-alternian space
g. a fistfight.

RICCIN KAYATA | 5 SWEEPS, 12 YEARS OLD
temasek, hanhai district [4855 words]